Tuesday, May 11, 2010

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























6 comments:

Gatsbys Gardens said...

Jim, I love all of those gorgeous hostas! Elmhurst, my mother lived in Elmhurst, my brother lives in Elmhurst, my daughter teaches in Elmhurst - small world!

Eileen

Isadora said...

What a beautiful collection of hostas! My favorte plants too!

Sylvana said...

You and my husband have a lot in common. He had never gardened in his life until a couple of years ago when I built him a shade garden. He LOVES hostas and ferns! When we were at the MN Landscape Arboretum the last couple of weekends, he was making his wishlist of hostas. We got a couple Sunday, too :)

Kyna said...

Wow, those are amazing! I feel jealous, I only have 2 kinds lol.

Floridagirl said...

Wow! Beautiful hosta collection! Looks like you have become a master gardener to me. Hosta makes it easy, doesn't it?

Lona said...

Jim your hostas are looking so good. I love the Fire and Ice one and the chartreuse bold ones. Very pretty. My Blue Mammoth is coming up nicely in the woodland bed. It was planted last spring so it should be a little bigger this year.It will probably never get as big as your Big Blue though.