Growing Hostas: Tips at a Glance
For shady gardens, hostas can be life-savers. They'll grow in tidy clumps and fill troubling bare spots under hedges, shrubs, and trees. Planted in large swaths, their handsome foliage will reflect the sunlight and add texture and interest to any ferns, astilbes, and hellebores that ar growing in the vicinity.
- Type Herbaceous
- Lifespan Perennial
- USDA Zones 3-8
- Light Shade
- Soil Well-drained
- How to Grow Divide in fall
- Companions Astilbes, ferns
- Design Tip Under trees
- Peak Season Summer flowers
Hostas: A Field Guide
Hostas will be your best friend if you are a new gardener with a shady spot that needs something green. Hostas also will be your best friend if you are a master gardener trying to create a subtly textured mosaic of color in a woodland garden.
Perennial hostas are in many ways perfect plants. They grow in tidy clumps that you can divide every few years. With more than 8,000 varieties in cultivation, hostas can sport almost any shade of foliage, from gray-green to yellow to striped. The handsome, waxy leaves can be thin and tapered or as rounded and ample as dinner plates. In summertime, they’ll send up stiff spikes adorned with sprays of small white or purple flowers.
Do hostas have drawbacks? Unfortunately deer love them as much as we do. Snails and slugs also fall in love. But with a few pest-repelling tricks (see Homemade Remedies: 5 Natural Garden Helpters), you can count on the same hosta leaves that unfurl in late spring to hide dying daffodil foliage to last throughout summer and into fall.
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