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Especially for a shade garden, the hosta is an invaluable plant. Together with hemerocallis (day-lily) and heuchera, it is a species that is a favourite with American hybridisers and many variants consequently have their origins in The New World. That said, the Netherlands boasts one of the larger specialist nurseries - Fransen in Ter Aa www.hostakweker.nl closely followed by van den Top (www.vandentop.nl) in Barnveld, where all of the varieties of hosta seen in our gardens are to be found. People interested in a more systematic look at the hosta varieties are recommended to visit a national collection notably that in Arboretum Trompenburg www.trompenburg.nl (Rotterdam) where varieties are conveniently planted in alphabetical order.

For the non-specialist, such as ourselves, we focus on 4 types of hosta characteristics:

Hosta “Sum and Substance”

          Decorative leaves

e.g. Hosta "June"	Hosta "Paradise Joyce"

 

Hosta "Little Wonder"

Hosta "Maraschino Cherry"	Hosta "Harry van der Laar"

Another characteristic could be scented flowers but flowers are arguably secondary to other hosta attributes and we have never selected plants for their flowers, although in August they can put on a good display.

Hosta "Stiletto"	Hosta "Spritzer"

 

There are countless numbers of hosta varieties available and they increase almost daily. For people wanting some quick visual references on the internet, there are two very good links that I can suggest:

• www.hostacollectie.be
• www.hostalibrary.org/index.html

 

Additionally, a very helpful article has recently been published dealing with leaf colour in hostas:

• www.detuingids.be/pages/detail.asp?id=3066

As already hinted, the hosta equivalent of the “black Tulip” would be one with red leaves and we have grouped plants in the Millennium Garden that have various quantities of this colouration – they are on the left as you go down the steps, opposite some “big” hostas such as Hosta "Sum & Substance".

The general curse of hosta is slug damage, which in extreme cases can reduce leaves to chewed off stumps and ugly perforations. Many larger leaved plants seem fairly resistant to visual degradation but we keep a close eye on signs of attack and then sprinkle metaldehyde pellets close to the stems. This is often enough to get rid of the smaller, ground dwelling slugs which do most damage. However, we do find that birds and frogs seem to keep most slug damage to a minimum and pellets are not often used until late in the year, if at all, even on our miniature hostas.

Bulking up” or increasing the number of hosta variants is classically done by splitting up the crowns as plants emerge in the spring. If you select plants at a garden centre or nursery having several crowns or growing points, you can wash the soil off the roots and cut plants into several sections at any time during the growing season in our experience. However, a lot of our bulking up comes from potting up seedlings, which are very numerous around many of our plants. Technically speaking, most if not all seedlings from hybrids are individually new varieties although visually they are often indistinguishable from their parents. (This is in contrast to aquilegia when several varieties are planted in close proximity.) For example in the Millennium Garden,  all the hosta down the side of the ditch are seedlings from Hosta sieboldiana “Elegans”,which they resemble with the exception of around 5 which seem to have a more golden leaf.

H. sieboldiana “Elegans”

It is a bit of a game with us to grow many seedlings on in the hope that we may discover a worthwhile “sport” – a plant with a difference, which is commercially interesting! Anybody who reads a book on hosta varieties cannot fail to be struck by the large numbers of varieties that arise as “sports”. In other words, in total contrast to work with plants such as roses and rhododendrons, where new hybrids are often the result of careful and calculated crosses, new hosta hybrids are largely arrived at by chance. I find this rather hard to believe but it is true, the relative flood of new hosta introductions suggests that there is some interesting scope for anyone prepared to set about some deliberate hybrid crosses. When I raised this subject with a leading hosta nurseryman, he pointed out that tissue culture was increasingly used to propagate new stock and that chemicals and hormones used to get new plants going must, in his view, contribute to the extensive sport formation.

At the risk of bruising the sensibilities of some hosta fanatics, I often think how very similar a lot of the otherwise lovely varieties are – particularly from the point of view of someone primarily interested in their decorative value in the garden. Similarities are not at all surprising when one delves into the origins of the varieties since, particularly where sports are involved, I assume that a novel leaf colour or variegation arises because a normally recessive gene becomes “activated” for some reason and is then acceptably stable for subsequent propagation.

If one starts with a basic set of genes as in Hosta Fortunei  which is in all probability itself a complex hybrid, the “Hyacintha” variant has given rise to several sports which in turn have sported. A sport arises as a result of shuffling a given series of genes. If this process occurs frequently and repeatedly, it would be surprising if the results did not give virtually identical sports on occasions. For example, “Hyacintha” sported to give us “Francee” which then gave rise to “Patriot”. More recently, “Patriot” sported to give us “Loyalist” while “Francee” produced “Fire ‘n Ice". "Loyalist" and "Fire 'n Ice" in our garden are as identical as one can get. With no disrespect intended to the nurserymen involved with these two sports, I do wonder if a more critical filter on new named varieties wouldn’t be helpful. Cutting a long story short, it seems an area of hosta culture that would be interesting to follow up. Joining a Hosta Club or Society www.hostavereniging.nl would be a good starting point.

About a decade ago, it was realised that the discolouration and mottling of leaves on some hostas was caused by a virus which is now called "hosta virus X" or simply HVX . It is very serious because it is easily spread by slight mechanical damage while handling infected plants and will weaken and eventually kill hostas. There is a lot of information on the Internet under a search of "HVX, hosta" with pictures of infected plants. The virus cannot survive in the soil so the total removal of a plant including every bit of root followed by thoroughly cleansing the hands should be OK for most gardeners. The situation is orders of magnitude more serious for nurseries and holders of collections because the virus can be so easily transmitted and one visibly infected plant can imply that the whole of a collection is infected because symptoms can take a few seasons to manifest themselves. Finally in this last context, I have come across one link on Google to the disease under http://www.northerngardening.com/HVX.htm which prompts me to say that our two major Dutch hosta nurseries with significant international trade, Fransen and van den Top operate a very rigorous (and costly!) joint testing programme to ensure as far as practically possible that their plants are free of virus.

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