Hosta Plants for Your Shade Garden

Hosta Plants are an ideal plant for beginners to use. While it's not impossible to kill a hosta, it is difficult to do.

One of the many hostas I planted to eat up bare space in my yard.
I originally planted to fill areas, not to paint a picture. The yard looked full but very disorganized. Luckily hostas can be moved easily.

Hosta (Plantain Lily) Zones 3-8

The varieties of hosta that have become available in the past few years is astonishing. There are hostas with tiny rippled leaves and hostas with giagantic leaves. Colors from yellow to deep green and powdery blues. Varigated foliage (those with white or cream coloring for edging or swirled into the leaves) are the most popular.

Albomargarita Fire & Ice Hosta Plant Albopicta Sieboldiana

Can you see from the pictures how the first three will brighten up a shady area? The white and yellow colors will stand out in low light areas. The blue one will create a calming effect. Color creates emotion.

When chosing how many and what varieties to use in your garden keep in mind that too much varigation causes confusion. If you were to plant the first three hostas shown together in a mass, they would each be fighting for visual attention.

Consider also the shade of green in the hosta plant. The Fire and Ice hosta would look best surrounded by hostas and other plants that have leaves in that same color shade.
Green isn't just green, there are many variations.

Planting

Dig a hole the same diameter as the pot the plant was grown in and as deep. If you soil is terrible, add some humus or peat moss to the soil you removed from the hole. Place hosta into the hole so that it rests at the same level as it did in the growing pot. Refill the hole and tap soil down with your hands. Water the plant thoroughly and go grab an ice tea.

Spacing is important when growing hostas. If the tag says the plant will reach 36" in diameter, it will reach every bit of that 36 inches if not more. It may take a few years, but it will get there.
To make the plants flow together with no gaps between plants, take 1/2 the diameter of mature plant and space using that measurement. So if the mature plant was going to be 36" wide, you would take 1/2 which is 18" and space them a foot and a half apart. Measuring from the center of one plant to the center of the next. The first year or two you may have gaps between the hostas, those can be filled in with shade annuals.

Dividing Your Hostas

To keep your plants from getting too crowded, or to use more of the same variety without buying them you can divide your hosta plants every 4-5 years.

In the spring when the pips (the leaves curled nicely into a tight cylinder as they emerge in the spring) reach a height of 1-2" dig the whole clump up from the ground.
Slice the sections in half or into quarters depending on how large it is.
Try not to damage too many of the pips while doing this.
Take one of the larger sections and replant it in the original spot. The other sections can be planted in other shady areas of your yard or given to friends.

Hosta Plants can also be grown in planters and containers. A large ornamental planter with a variagated hosta nestled amongst a sea of green leaved hostas not only adds variety but height to a garden.