Hostas and More

My interest in gardening has grown considerably since I moved to my current location in 2001.  Many people find shade gardening a real challenge.  We do have other areas of the yard which have sun, but a large portion of our yard is in deep shade… an ideal area for HOSTAS.

As many hosta lovers have found, the interest usually starts with a ‘few’ and rapidly grows.  I started out with 4 plants in the far corner of the yard in deep shade.  That was a very small garden area.  Since nothing else was growing under the trees besides ivy, weeds, hunks of grass not getting enough sunlight, I continued to expand that section.  The tiny circle widened, then it stretched to the side, then it moved more towards the middle of the yard, then it widened…. you see the pattern.  Hostas require next to nothing in the way of care.  There are so many varieties… miniature to giant, solid colors to beautiful patterns and some more sun tolerant than others.

The hardest challenge is remembering what you have purchased and marking them because people will surely want to know what a particular variety is.  I keep a spreadsheet of the ones I’ve purchased, along with a general location of where they are planted.  I suppose a detailed map might be in order to help me remark those which lose their markers.  Summer of 2017 has been particularly challenging between tags getting removed during leaf raking as well as the squirrels having a ‘marker party’ digging them out (I have no idea what the interest is there).

I’m currently in the process of remarking hostas with 10 inch markers that have plates on them that can be engraved.  Hopefully, their survival rate will be longer than the previous tags used.  This requires studying the photos I’ve taken and matching them to the spreadsheet information.  It is also a good way to get reacquainted with their beauty.  My initial 4 have become more in the order of 200 different varieties.