Question
I just bought a beautiful Calla Lily and am wondering if I should pot it and then bring it in for the winter or plant it in our flower bed which is surrounded by a fish pond? I am very new to gardening so any and all advice you can give would be greatly appreciated!

Answer
Hi Kristi,
Thanx for your question.  Your calla lily will not survive an Alaskan winter.  Keep it as a potted plant so you can enjoy it year after year.  In a cool climate, they prefer full sun with moist but not soggy soil.  In hotter, sunnier climates, they will benefit from afternoon shade in fact, I have used mine in the shade or partial shade and they do fine because it gets so hot here.  Feed it a balanced liquid fertilizer every couple of weeks while it is in bloome (12-12-12) and sprinkle some bone meal and work into the soil after the plant has stopped blooming.  Before your first frost bring the pot indoors and keep it in a frost place but a place that gets cool, is dry and dark and the corm (some people erroneous call the structure from which the calla grows a bulb or tuber, it is neither, it is a corm...) will rest for the winter.  Water only enough to keep the soil from drying out completely.  In the spring beginning watering on a regular basis and the corm will sprout to start all over again.  I hope this helps.
Tom