Mother Earth’s Garden

My Hosta Collection

by linette on June 21st, 2008

I’m a big hosta fan. We have several large mature trees around our house, so about half of the border garden around my house is shaded. Hostas grow great in the shade, and require very little work to look beautiful.

I’ve long forgotten most of their names. I know the one pictured above is a blue angel hosta, but I don’t know the names of any of the rest of them. The blue angel is more beautiful than this photo shows. It has an almost iridescent blue color. There’s one flower spike coming up, it has a white flower and it’s very striking when it blooms.

Here are some of the other hostas around my house. This next one is fairly new, most of the others have been there for several years, and are getting quite large.

One thing to remember when you’re shopping for hostas, you don’t have to shell out big money for a large plant. Even the smaller plants will look like these within a couple years.

Hostas are fairly carefree to grow, they enjoy the shade, but will also tolerate partial sun. They don’t spread, but they do form a large clump after several years. You may want to dig up mature hostas and divide them.

Most of my hostas came free from fellow gardeners, the ones I purchased came from spring plant sales. I don’t think I paid more than a couple dollars for any of them. Most of them are 5 or 6 years old. I’m always on the lookout for new and interesting leaf shapes or patterns, like the hosta below. It was added to the collection last year.

The only pests to plague my hostas are slugs and snails. I keep them at bay with a little Diatomaceous Earth, and the occasional spray of Insecticidal Soap. You can also drown them in beer. Just bury a small container in the ground, and keep it full of beer. The slugs are attracted to the beer, they crawl in and drown.

This last hosta is another blue variety. It has a little dirt on it from all the recent heavy rains.

I didn’t show you all of my hostas, the rest are very similar to the plants pictured here. I’ve only lost two hosta plants in the last ten years. Those two plants died last summer when we did a major cutback on one of the large trees in our front yard. We had the tree cut back in late June, to lighten it up since it was so close to the house. Two of the hostas in the front yard turned brown and lost their leaves. I think it was the sudden exposure to more sun. Neither plant came back this year.

I love hostas because they are so carefree. They also do a great job of shading out the weeds around them. Do you have a favorite hosta variety?

Hosta Images (c) Linette

Share This

Related Stories

• Hosta Delima
• Mother Earth’s Garden June in Review
• A Collection of Lilies
• Veggie Tales and Cannibalism
• If Your Kids Won’t Eat Their Vegetables…

POSTED IN: Gardening Tips/ Tricks, How to Grow Stuff, garden photos