If you buy these pricey lilies, I suggest that you first plant the rhizome in a container with sides 5"-7" deep and filled with garden soil or pond mud 3.5"-4" thick. A dish pan works well as a planting container. Potting soil is light and most of it floats away. You can add a small amount of fertilizer to stimulate growth. Plant rhizome properly at an angle with the growing tip peeking out of the soil and other end deep in the soil. Submerge the planted container with about 6"-12" of water covering the soil. Move container deeper as the leaves emerge. I tie a cord to the containers to tether and more easily retrieve them. Allow to grow all summer. Then in fall or next spring pull out the whole tangled root mass and 'nestle' it into the pond bottom where you want it to begin growing. This planting method insures the best chance for growth of the expensive varieties of lilies for ponds. Note white amur, grass carp will eat the lily new tender shoots / sprouts. Turtles can also be a problem until the lilies are well established.
I have done what Bill has suggested above for our hardy water lilies. Only thing different is that we put them into deep rubbermade totes. They have been planted in the pots or totes all their lives and moved to about 6 feet of water. They winter there and we now have a mass of about 100 square feet from three totes. Planted red, orange, and yellow. The muskrat seem to only like the yellow here for some reason. Turtles leave them alone here.
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