With foliage as big and well-shaped and colorful as hostas’, more and more gardeners are happy to grow these landscaping favorites. The hostas come with a bonus: fragrant flowers in clusters of white or pale lavender held high by sturdy stalks as if waving hello at garden viewers.
When it comes to leafy displays we rely on hostas (otherwise known as plantain lilies). We’ve gone around plant sales and made trips to local nurseries looking just for these big-leaved show-offs.
Hostas ‘Francee’ (lower left), planted right at the entrance walkway, welcomes visitors to our front garden and home
Hostas are the green and gold versions of versatile and colorful caladiums. While caladiums are mainly shade-loving favorites, hostas can thrive in the sun or in the shade, depending on the variety or hybrid.
Hostas deliver well. Their leaves are very pretty from the time they open up from their young cigar-like configuration until the foliage slowly loses its grandeur and splendor in cold September or October.
Even when the leaves are curled at the edges and turn golden yellow when the temperature drops, hostas still manage to catch the viewers’ attention. In fact, we find the bright gold of the dying hosta leaves very appealing. It is as if the hostas are making their Swan Lake goodbyes when the night temperatures start to dip very low in October. Their golden leaves add to the colors of the autumn landscape.
Hostas are the workhorses in our home garden. They provide great underplanting for taller perennials and shrubs. Many of them prefer part sun anyway. Their huge leaves provide foil or contrast to smaller-leaved plants. We often plant hostas at the edge of a bed to give an impression of bulk and fullness.
The following are some of the hostas dotting our gardens, and their respective photos and names. We have a few more hybrids, but it’s hard to differentiate them from their surrounding plants, so this incomplete catalog will suffice for now.
Hosta ‘Sum and Substance‘ is Hosta of the Year for 2004. We limit the spread of this largest hosta in our garden by surrounding it with strong growers, otherwise, its oversize leaves can grow to two feet and the plant can gobble up over six feet of real estate if left on its own in our front entranceway border. Its leathery leaves of chartreuse turn golden as the heat of summer peaks. Hosta ‘Sum and Substance‘ earns well its name, with its big leaves dwarfing other foliage of surrounding plants.
The giant chartreuse clump is a knockout, topped by tall scapes of pale lavender flowers in midsummer. If let be, it can spread like a bully. For larger gardens, this variety is definitely a favorite standout; but in our stamp-size backyard, we keep dividing it to control its domination of a berm by the compost pile.
Hosta ‘Empress Wu’ is another BIG one! A mature clump will reach three feet tall, with over-sized dark green leaves that have deeply impressed veins and pale lavender flowers on 5′ scapes. Again, to control this hosta’s spread, we plant it really close to other vigorous plants and against the garage wall.
A powdered blue giant with heavily corrugated leaves of excellent substance, hosta ‘Blue Mammoth’ is another giant hosta growing to 35 inches tall and almost twice the width.
Hosta 'Blue Mammoth' holds its very pale lavender, almost white, flowers on 30″-36″ scapes by mid July.
Hosta ‘Guacamole’
Hosta ‘Guacamole’ has giant (11″ by 8″) variegated leaves with bright apple green in the center and deeper green leaf margins, so a color combo that resembles a sliced green avocado. It’s noted for its highly fragrant flowers in summer.
Hosta ‘Frances Williams’
Medium-sized hostas come aplenty, and more hybrids are cultivated every year by enthusiasts and garden centers. Most of the hostas in our garden belong to this size category.
One eye-catching medium-sized hosta is hosta ‘Frances Williams.‘ It has large blue-green, puckered, cupped leaves variegated with irregular greenish-yellow margins. It is a clump-forming perennial that typically matures in a spreading mound to 2 feet tall, but spreads over time to 4 feet wide.
With a height of 25 to 28 inches (65 to 70 cm), hosta ‘Christmas Tree’ is a medium hosta. Its heavily corrugated dark green leaves sport extremely wide cream margins that fade to white in summer. This hosta has what it takes to stand out in the garden and grab attention.
Christmas Tree’s hybrid called hosta ‘Christmas Pageant’ has larger leaves with even wider yellow green margins.
The 2010 Hosta of the Year, hosta ‘First Frost’ is a medium hosta at 13-16 inches (35 to 40 cm) which has lavender flowers. It has deep blue green leaves with yellow edges that fade to white in midsummer.
Hosta ‘Pizzazz’ emerges with heart-shaped frosted blue leaves when young with a bright gold margin. By mid-summer the leaves are blue-green with a creamy white margin that often streaks towards the midrib. It has light lavender to near white flowers in summer.
Hosta ‘Paul’s Glory’
1999 Hosta of the year, hosta Paul’s Glory is a medium-sized hosta with bright chartreuse leaves turning bright gold to creamy white by mid-summer. It has blue-green margins changing to dark green by mid-summer. It has pale lavender flowers on scapes up to 35″ inches (14 cm) from July to early August.
Hosta ‘Northern Halo’ is an erect, medium variety, at 20″ (7-8 cm) tall. It forms a mound of heart-shaped, cupped, heavily corrugated, blue-green leaves with white margins and 30-inch racemes of bell-shaped, white flowers.
Our favorite medium-sized hosta is hosta ‘Francee.’ For personal reasons.
For years of beautifying our side yard next to the sidewalk, the ‘Francee‘ has always managed to catch the attention of passers-by and neighbors. And we think, like a real show-off, this hosta glows to covet the admiration of anyone.
We think hosta ‘Francee’ is the best white-margined hosta in our garden. It has attractive arching mound of broadly heart-shaped, rich dark green leaves, 6 in. long (15 cm), with narrow white margins. Funnel-shaped pale lavender blooms appear in late summer, rising on scapes 28 inches long. It is a very easy plant to pair up with. It is especially great with plants with white blooms or leaves, well, with really any plant.
Hosta ‘Patriot‘ is a cultivar off of the long popular Hosta ‘Francee.’
H. ‘Patriot’ can grow to a 12-18″ tall mound, 24-30″ wide, so on the smallish medium side. Its leaves have variegated, oval shape (to 7″ long) with deep green centers and wide irregular white margins.
The crisp, clean green leaves with white margins have made hosta albomarginata another favorite. Super easy to grow, super hardy, and its flowers are fragrant, so what’s not to like it.
The leaves and the white margins are not as wide as those of hosta ‘Francis Wiliams,’ and that’s how we can tell them apart.
Hosta ‘Golden Tiara’ forms a smallish medium mound of broadly oval to heart-shaped, mid-green leaves, 4" by 6", irregularly margined chartreuse. Its leaves show narrow creamy margins that change to golden-yellow before fading to cream again at the end of summer.
We grow a limited number of the dwarf varieties. We find these smallies a bit challenging to grow and flourish. We have spent more money on the purchase of the little ones than on the giant varieties.
Since the giant and medium-sized hostas hold their presence much better than the dwarf varieties, we almost have given up draining out our gardening budget on the little ones. For optimum enjoyment, we generally plant our dwarf varieties in areas with high gardeners’ traffic like by the front walkway, flanking the back door, near the deck, and in pots.
One dwarf hosta we purchased mainly for its funny name is hosta ‘Mouse and Cat.’ The hosta looked pitifully tiny when we first bought it from a local nursery. It has pale lavender flowers in July and grows in part shade or dappled shade to a height of no more than 4 inches (10 to 11 cm), and it’s a slow grower. In its first two years in our pot, we almost pulled it because we thought it was a weed.
Hosta ‘Stiletto’ has long narrow dark olive green, lance-shaped (like pointed shoes) leaves with a rippled white margin. It forms a dense mound of long and rippled foliage. Its purple flowers in August are very showy for such a tiny plant.
Yes, beautiful things can come in small packages all right.
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