Lilies: The Accidental Lily Gardener, 1 by Niere

Niere wrote:
Hoo boy. Have I done everything backwards. I'm hoping to get some helpful input from those of you who know what you are doing with your lilies!

First off, I purchased my lily bulbs very much as an after thought when I was purchasing my bulbs last fall. After I had picked my tulips and daffodils I thought "well, a few lilies might be nice" and as I was going to put in a lily garden eventually anyway I thought "I'll just get a few..."

So last fall I recieve my bulbs and when I was done planting all my other bulbs I looked at my lily bulbs and thought "well, I'll just stick you in over here" and planted them in an area in my side yard. I didn't prepare a bed at all--just went in with the drill and auger and dug up some holes, plopped them in and that was that.

Now of course it's spring and I come to the realization that that was probably not my best strategy. All my lilies--and then some--have come up, but they were basically sprouting themselves up through the turf, which is not exactly the best way for them to show themselves off. My answer to that was to shear down the grass as much as I could, put two layers of newspaper over the sod and then top off the newspaper with a mixture of ProMix (left over from seed-starting) and some bags of garden soil. My hope is that if I keep it moist enough the newspaper will biodegrade and kill off the grass at the same time. I'd also like to plant some cleome and some lady's mantle in the same area--the lady's mantle I'll have to cut through the paper to plant, but I'm hoping that I can just sow the cleome in the top layer of garden soil and that by the time it sends down sizable roots it'll be able to work it's way through the paper.

Does this sound like it will work? Any suggestions for changing anything? My primary concern at this point is that I don't want to chance breeding disease for the lilies.

I thought I'd include a few pictures--the first one is of the bed in general. I'm hoping to put a rock border at the edge of it.