Looking and smelling wonderful in the garden this week is our 2022 introduction, Hosta ‘Summer Snowstorm’. We love late-flowering hostas with large fragrant flowers, and this one doesn’t disappoint, with foliage that still looks great in late summer.
We often hear and read that hostas won’t grow well in the mid and deep south, so we thought we should share a few garden photos from this week at JLBG (Zone: 7b), to bust yet another garden myth.
Starting with some small/miniature hostas, the first is Doug Beilstein’s Hosta ‘Baby Booties’, a superbly vigorous dwarf that has really been exceptional.
Hosta ‘Blue Fingers’ is a PDN/JLBG introduction of one of the very few tiny blue-leaf hostas with excellent vigor and a good multiplication rate.
Hosta ‘Wriggles and Squiggles’ is an exceptionally wavy-leaf, small, gold introduction from plant breeder, Hans Hansen.
Hosta ‘Fire and Ice’ is another Hans Hansen introduction that was a reverse sport of Hosta ‘Patriot’. It fares much better when given more light, even a few hours of sun in the morning.
Hosta ‘Swamp Thing’ is a PDN/JLBG introduction with great vigor and glossy foliage
Hosta ‘Beyond Glory’ is a Hans Hansen sport from Hosta ‘Glory’. This is just one exceptional hosta, which also benefits from a bit of morning sun or very open shade.
Hosta ‘Diamond Lake’ is a stunning new Hans Hansen creation with large blue corrugated leaves with exceptional leaf rippling.
Hosta ‘Gold Meadows’ is one of our favorite sports of Hosta sieboldiana ‘Elegans’. When the weather warms, the central pattern fades to solid blue, but in spring, it’s absolutely stunning. It has also shown great vigor in the Southeastern US.
Hosta ‘One Last Dance’ is a Hans Hansen/Walters Gardens sport of Hosta ‘Dancing Queen’. We think it’s hard to beat this amazing plant. The vigor is evident in our photo.
I had a great visit recently with David Cain and Denny Werner. Most of you know Dr. Werner from his work at NC State, first as a peach breeder and later as the creator of a parade of amazing redbud hybrids.
David and Denny were both grad students together back at Michigan State. Dr. Cain went on to become a fruit breeder, and is the papa of the incredibly famous Cotton Candy grape. On the off chance you haven’t tried it, be sure to search for it at your local grocery store. David worked in academia and later the USDA, before embarking on his own venture, where he made several incredible fruit breeding breakthroughs.
I didn’t realize David is a long-time plant nerd and Plant Delights customer, and has recently moved from California to the East Coast for his next plant breeding adventure. We had a blast talking plant breeding and looking at a few of our crazy breeding projects at JLBG.
There’s a reason hostas are the #1 perennial in the US. The incredible diversity of leaf shapes, sizes, and colors are one, combined with the array of climates in which they thrive. It’s long been rumored that hostas don’t grow well here in Zone 7b, but that simply isn’t the case if you prepare your soil properly (lots of compost) and allow for plenty of summer moisture.
Below are a few hosta cultivars that are looking particularly nice this week at JLBG. Of course, the proverbial deer-in-the-room is that hosta make quite the tasty buffet for both humans and wood rats. Deer fences and organic sprays all work, but the breakthrough will come when CRISPR technology is used to implant the Capsaicin (pepper) gene in hostas, rendering them too hot for most deer.
Here are a few of our favorites this week. Hosta ‘California Gold Rush’ has shown incredible vigor.
Love the over-the-top waviness of Hosta ‘Wheee!’
Hosta ‘One Last Dance’ has it all…vigor, size, ruffles, a nice flower show, and great leaf coloration. Did I mentioned that it’s also very sun tolerant if the soil is moist?
Hosta ‘Coast to Coast’ is also very sun tolerant with amazingly corrugated leaves and great vigor on a fairly large clump.
Hosta ‘Do Wap’ is one of our yet to be introduced hybrids from our work to create blue hostas that hold the color well into the summer.
Hosta ‘Pie ala Mode’ didn’t get a lot of fanfare when it was introduced, but this has been exceptional in our gardens at JLBG. Hope these entice you to explore this amazing genus.
We just snapped this photo of our 2006 Hosta introduction, H. ‘Swamp Thing’, looking quite divine. Sadly, this was one of those plants that just didn’t sell well, which is a shame, since we think it’s one of our best hosta introductions in terms of both vigor, and visual interest. We named it after the Creature from the Black Lagoon, since the foliage is so shiny, it looks like it just emerged from being under water. Hard to figure out the buying public sometimes.
Our hostas have happy roots!
Hostas are often touted as the best shade-loving plants for the perennial garden. At Plant Delights Nursery our hostas are all container-grown and are multiple-division plants that you can immediately divide.
All of the hostas that appear in this post are from our own breeding program at Juniper Level Botanic Garden. Learn more about our breeding program here.