That's my story & I'm sticking to it. What is your story?

[tsbccowboy]

That's my story & I'm sticking to it. What is your story?

In about 1992 I was given a Hosta as a going away present from a co-worker at a company I was working at. I dutifully planted it on the north side of the house. I now had a total of one plants in my yard. In the fall of 2000 my significant other, Diana, moved in with me. The spring of 2001 she bought some Hostas at the local gardening club's spring sale. They were dutifully planted. The next couple of years she bought more plants at the garden club sales and they were all dutifully planted. In the fall of 2003 we were at a local nursery and I saw a 'Striptease' (the Hosta) and Diana saw a 'Blue Angel', these were purchased and we referred to them as "his & hers". At about the same time we visited my Mom and she had yellow Hostas, can you believe it, yellow Hostas?!?!?!?! That did it, I went online and ordered a bunch of Hostas that winter and joined Papou's group talking about Hostas (Papou had impeccable gardens and records of his Hostas, Papou passed away in 2009). If I remember right, we did a Hosta and Daylily alphabet the next year in 2005. Diana & I have since split up but I still have my Hostas which I still keep splitting up. I have enjoyed my Hosta forum friends over the years!


John 'Cowboy'

[Linda P]

May I add to your story that your garden is among the most restful and inspiring I have seen? And also has what must be one of the largest H. 'Eskimo Pie' in the world?
It was a privilege to spend an afternoon in your garden.

[tsbccowboy]

Linda P,

I am humbled. Thank you for the kind words.
You are truly one of the beautiful people in the World.

Cowboy

[kHT]

Nice to put a face with the name Cowboy, love your story too! Ya got some photos?

When we moved into our current house there were a few hostas but it was Janet and the gang here that I have to thank
for the hosta gardens I currently have. We hope to add our Brugmansia to the hosta beds this year now that the fence
is completed in the back yard. A year ago we added some Helleborus between the outer hosta edge of the garden and
we are starting to see them come up first. We also moved the two tree Wisteria to the front yard so it's starting to
reshape the west garden bed.

[tsbccowboy]

KHT,

I hope your fence does make good neighbors, I wish you well with that.

Have I got photos?!?!? I have enough photos to bore to death the most avid Hosta gardener. I like to record the year-to-year differences in the Hostas and gardens.

There is nothing like enabling each other!

Cowboy

[kHT]

Cowboy, I have been enjoying the ones you have posted that I could check out. Do you have a few photos of your favorite areas where your hostas are?
I love to see others hosta beds.

I tell ya it's been nice to have the fence up and I'll be glad when it's all done! I think they are getting the hint.

[Ludi]

Cowboy,

Thank you for sharing your hosta story ! Think I'll bite and take a stab at it myself, maybe encourage others to share there's as well.

In comparison to you, I am still an infant in my hosta gardening career. 2015 will bring my third year. I didn't waste any time though, and have managed to collect 159 different cultivar, so far. Last I looked, I was up to 51 on my Wishlist. My perception of 'enough room' is dramatically skewed ... or maybe it's just denial.

Anywho, what pushed me down the rabbit hole was a big old 'Elegans'.



I had not been a stranger to hosta, and growing up mum had the 'white edged' ones, so I knew what one was if I saw it. We lived on a farm in the middle of a field, so there wasn't a tree to be found, but those undulatas are tanks and held through the July and Aug heat like champs. They looked horrible, but never died. God bless 'em.

Fast forward to 2009 ... I'm done with college and move to Philly to start working my current job (originally I'm from Western PA). Caught up in the move and everything else that goes along with starting your adult life, I honestly didn't pay that much attention to the yard the first few years since it was so overgrown and unkempt it was discouraging to think there was anything beautiful about it. I knew that I wanted to start my own garden, but in this jungle I didn't know where to start.

But I'll never forget, one morning in June of 2012 I was walking out to my car and one of the many branches had grown out far enough to smack me in the face as I walked down to the sidewalk. I remember thinking, "THAT's IT, I'm tearing into this mess, THIS YEAR!" It was almost funny how mad I was, but it motivated the hell out of me, for some reason.

But, I grew up gardening in FULL sun, on an open field ... now in the suburbs of Philly surrounded by decades old trees ... I was like ... what the hell grows in shade ?!? ... and there they were ... my Three Graces Elegans.

Of course at the time I had no idea they were 'Elegans' and had taken to calling them Big Blue. But there among the overgrown shrubs were these three massive hostas. I remember just thinking how gorgeous they looked and that I had never seen a hosta so big, or that color ! A soft blue with green undertones. Divine !!!

So like any GenY kid, I jumped onto the InterWebs to see what these hostas were really all about. Pictures, forums, articles, and vendors flooded my browser and the rest ... well the rest is still to come, but I am definitely hooked. There is just something .. not sure what ... but something about hostas that really does it for me. Kind of like the way orchids, roses, daylilies, and other flashy perennials do, but the coolest thing about hostas is that you get all that color, style, and character all year since it's all in the foliage. I do so love my upright lilies and the magnificent show they put on, but am so sad when it's over.

Not with hostas, you get all the drama ... all year !!!

I could keep going, but you get the point by now.

So Thanks Cowboy, that was fun reminiscing. You really made me think about some dates there, and it's nice to have them written down now.

I do hope others decide to share, it is always neat to see how we fall down this rabbit hole of hostadom.

Cheers,
Ludi

A pic of me at Hidden Lakes this past summer next to a very old King Michael.

[kHT]

Thank you Ludi for sharing. Cowboy has a great idea and I too hope others will add their stories.

[tsbccowboy]

Ludi,

Thank you for sharing your story!

Though you may be fairly new to Hostadom, there will be newer people coming along. Each year you will look at your gardens and say WOW! Before you know it 5 years go by, then 10. All of sudden you aren't a newbie anymore but you still feel like a newbie because there are still gardeners out there who have been around longer. There will always be gardens that are bigger or smaller, have bigger or smaller Hostas, more or less weeds and it doesn't matter; you just enjoy your garden and others will enjoy it too.

I can see how 'Elegans' got you!

I hope we hear more stories too,
Cowboy

[Chris_W]

Wow, this seems like it was a very long time ago and yet also seems like yesterday!

Back in 1990, at the ripe old age of 23, I bought a house. Some friends from college who live in Ann Arbor told me about a piece of property that was about to be bulldozed to make way for a car dealership and the previous owners, who had long since been gone, used to own a nursery so the multi-acre property was full of unique plants that were going to be buried. We made several rescue runs there before it was plowed up and we got almost every hosta available to man (or so we thought) including the green and white one, the white and green one, some green ones, and a couple blue ones. I planted them at my new place, along with some things that she gave me from her garden and some things from my Mom's garden, but had no clue about what I was doing and of course I killed a fair amount of it. The perennials that did grow were things I wish I had never taken - snow on the mountain and creeping charlie were two of them - but the hostas did great. I knew they were shade plants so put them on the north side of the house and they loved it.

A year later I met Brian and he wanted to do gardens around the property, so we bought some plants by mail including a hosta collection. Of course they were plants from one of the junk catalogs like Michigan Bulb so the plants were either dead and rotting or the smallest things you've ever seen. But a few of the hostas eventually grew, including a big Frances Williams that somehow survived under a row of privet. Who knew these things would grow so much and need so much room! After a few years we tried more and more to grow things, learning more about soil amendment so that we had a lot more success, and after a while the gardens were the talk of the neighborhood.

Brian ended up getting a job at a chain nursery in 1993 (Frank's) and brought home more plants including Krossa Regal which was a highlight on the north side, and a plant we still have to this day, 22 years later. I also worked part time at Frank's and we started taking on odd jobs for people who needed things planted, weeded, mulched, or just things delivered. I tried to get Brian to start up a business doing that, but it wasn't really his thing. Then in 1995 I found myself out of work so we decided to start a business together. In 1996 we started growing plants for the landscaping biz, in 1997 opened up our backyard nursery to the public, in 1999 started the website, in 2003 bought a new piece of property (without any damn maple trees!) where we moved and reopened in 2005. Again, it seemed like it was both a long time yet also a short time. Sometimes thinking about all we've done in the last 20 years just makes my head spin.

[tsbccowboy]

<<<<<<Wow, this seems like it was a very long time ago and yet also seems like yesterday!>>>>>>>

Ain't that the truth!

Thank you for sharing Chris!

It is fun to talk Hostas and see Hosta photos but it is even better meeting the people behind the Hostas......and in Chris' case, the man behind the monster hosta!

Cowboy

[Chris_W]

Thanks Cowboy. It is great to meet you too, the man behind those great hosta gardens and pictures!

And if anyone is wondering, I've shared that pic before and it is His Honor, and no, I did not photoshop that hosta in front of myself

[tsbccowboy]

Like Chris's signature says "We may be strangers but we gather in the forum as friends"!

[kHT]

I love to come in here and read about how everyone got their start. See Chris grows the best of the best.

[McTavish]

Thanks to Cowboy for starting this. It's always interesting to see how other people 'discovered' hostas and found their way from appreciation to obsession.

I did not come from a gardening family or a place where people generally gardened very much. Southern California is a place of severely clipped Junipers which I hate to this day. In Southern California people bought their fruits and vegetables at the store. My mother planted a few annuals every year and that was it. She was delighted and in her sixties when I planted parsley and chives for her. She never got over not having to buy them anymore.

I began to garden when I lived on the mild west coast of BC. I moved to the interior of BC 25 years ago where the gardening is much different. Going from zone 7/8 to zone 4/5 is a learning experience. At first I still tried to grow everything I did on the coast without success for many of the plants. Meanwhile I was helping my sister who lives in the Seattle area of Washington. She was getting to know the garden she'd inherited when she bought her home (lots of Cedar trees, Rhododendrons, Ferns). There was a plant growing by her shed without any help from anyone. Eventually I told her I thought it was a Hosta. A piece of it magically found it's way home with me and that got me interested. I read about Hostas and began to buy a few locally and from mail order nurseries. This was 1993. At the end of the year I had 6. The First picture below is my first Hosta, the bottom left of the picture. (click to enlarge)

I didn't know what it was for a long time. Based on description read in books (there wasn't the internet yet for pictures). I identified it as Elegans, Blue Angel, Big Daddy. It looked big to me compared to nothing. I now realize it's in the Fortunei family and most likely Fortunei Viridis.

The next year I also bought 6 plants. The year after that only one. I wasn't quite hooked yet. Most of these were in pots sitting around under trees. Hostas needed shade - in my mind this meant that not a drop of sun should ever hit them. One of the early purchases was Gold Standard. Gradually I noticed that it was nice looking and bright even in the shade. It drew my eye to it. It looked nice all year as opposed to flowering plants that had three or four weeks to shine. Watching the Roses struggle (too cold a winter for most of them) and perennial flowers fade (too much shade for many of them) I came to appreciate the Hostas more and more. They were all still in the shade at this point. Somewhere along the line I bravely moved Wide Brim to a place it got direct sun for the morning. It thrived to my amazement. That was like a dam breaking and from then on I planted in more and more sun with mostly good results. I now have over 900 plants with 700 + different varieties. The ones in hot (90+) west facing afternoon sun may bleach by late summer but overall they do better than those in too much shade.

I'm a gardener who breaks the rules and does things that are not advised. I plant way too close together because I want the garden to please me at this moment. I happily move 200+ plants every year because they are crowded or need more or less light. I move them because I think they will look better than something else in the spot or they are too slug prone. Any excuse will do. This time of the year with the promise of another season and months of enjoyment ahead is the best time of the year for me.

The second picture below was taken at Sebrite Nursery in Oregon. Last year my sister and I had a wonderful time visiting (for me) my first ever Hosta Nursery in person. She has became a hosta fanatic too and grows well over 400 plants in pots around her front and back yard. We are both out of room but so what? It was composed as the cover for a Hosta Calendar I do every year for she and I. She's the one on top, I'm on the bottom. Sebright has some huge Hostas.

[tsbccowboy]

McT,

I feel so privileged to have you as a Hosta forum friend and to see your Hosta and garden photos. The beauty of our gardens is to share them with family and friends and you bring out so much beauty from your gardens!

Cowboy