all hosta all the time

While our garden does have things other than hosta, you can guess what my favorite plants are. When I get a new plant, I always ask myself how it works with hosta. I guess you could say that I garden in the shadows and Pat gardens in the sunshine. It didn’t start out that way. Before we moved to Cleveland I had never planted anything. Oh, I could build a great raised bed and fill it up with dirt, but that was it.

The nudge I needed to bring out the hidden gardener (what a great name for a garden blog) was the mother-in-law, Shirley. Shirley always had wonderful looking gardens. She is the hosta queen of Elmhurst. She brought mama and papa hosta, some ferns and some day lilies on her first visit. I planted them and guess what, I didn’t kill them. They survived and thrived. Now based on the plants, you may say the bar wasn’t set too high. Actually the bar was a stick on the ground. The important thing was I passed the test. I could grow stuff. Well as you all know (at least in the deepest reaches of your gardening dreams) there is never too much stuff, especially if the stuff consists of beautiful plants.

When Pat and I joined our first garden club, I came to the realization that I had to know the names of plants. And I threw away all those little plastic sticks. At Blotanical I had to have at least a passing understanding of what I grew. I promise if I ever buy another hosta, I’ll keep the ID sticks. Here’s some of our hosta.

Big Blue Lord of the Hosta Patch