Confessions of a Hostaholic

Not certain what they say about “collectors”, but it’s probably not good. As I’ve alluded to you in past posts I have a few collections that I’ve amassed over the past years [rolling eyes]. Now I don’t collect for the rarity of the items, these are solely for my enjoyment, not for investment purposes. Unfortunately I have a very short attention span, so I may collect something with gusto for a few years, but then it's as if someone pulls the plug out of the power socket, the love affair wanes and interest is gone. It has been that way with everything so far, except for my hosta collection.

Hostas are a wonderful genus of plant that I stumbled onto in 2005. On a whim my sisters and I visited a local arboretum where they were holding their annual hosta show and sale. Now I should probably preface this with a note that I had the ‘green ones’, the ‘green ones with a white edge’, the ‘white ones with a green edge’, what more could there be?

Anyway, we walked in and were expecting to see pots of green leafy plants similar to those dotting my landscape, but instead there was row upon row of tables holding a sea of bud vases, with each one containing one solitary leaf. All were rigidly sticking straight up, held in that place by wads of cotton balls that had been stuffed in the mouth of the vases around the stems. We chuckled at the absurdity of the hosta show [it did look dumb], but after the joking faded away we were intrigued , because we had no idea there was such an extensive selection of hostas available! The sizes ranged from small leaves, an inch in length (dwarf), to those that were fourteen inches in diameter (x-large). We scoured all of the entries and jotted down the names of those that struck us as fabulous. We were awed by everything. There was even a selection of hosta flowers on display, one in particular really stood out; it was a flower scape from H. 'Victory’ which was six feet tall. It was in a vase seated on the floor, it was so tall it towered over us.

After we scrutinized all there was to see we went to look at the hosta vendors’ offerings. The sensation I got when I walked into the sales area was that of looking at a menu in a Greek diner. There was so much to choose from I didn’t know what to buy, and so being overwhelmed I only bought a lovely small ruffled one named H. “Candy Dish”.

Needless to say that first plant sowed the seeds to my hosta addiction and I've increassed from that one small plant to almost three hundred named varieties. I’ve lost a few to winter heaving, but for the most part they are a fabulously easy plant to cultivate!

Here are a few of my babies.

CD~

'Northern Mist'

'Abba Dabba Do' and 'Sum & Substance"

'Clifford's Comet'

'Javelin' the streaked leaves in the middle, with 'Orange Slices' (the clump of tiny bright yellow leaves to the right), a bit of 'Powered by Bob' shows at the very forefront and that's a baby 'Victory' at the rear of the photo (I want those six foot flower scapes!)