The year 2006 was the 25th year that Green Hill Farm has been in the hosta business. It all began in 1981, a one day hosta sale with twenty-four cultivars and four customers. Look what a huge, complicated beast it has become!!!

To celebrate we had a 25th Birthday Party at the nursery, complete with a cake and maybe champagne. But what should be written for this occasion? I thought about my favorite 25 hostas, even 25 “must have” hostas, but it just did not seem right, maybe too predictable. As you know I do have an affinity for lists, however, so I thought I might have some fun with this one, “Twenty-five Reasons to Love Hostas”.

Usually there is a complicated set of rules, my rules, attached to any list I publish. This list has none. The reasons are not even in any particular order, although I did save the best for last. There may be some overlap among some of these but not in my mind and if you think I fall short of 25 by a couple, feel free to add some of your own.

	1.	Hostas are collectable. Over the 55 years of my life I have collected everything from baseball cards and pottery to palm trees, crotons, and hostas. I have a stamp collection and currently coin collecting mania runs rampid in the Solberg household. As with everything else, when you begin collecting hostas, you want to get them all but you soon realize this is impossible. Still it is the quest for one you do not have that is such a thrill. Hostas will never let you down. There is always one more, waiting just around the corner.
	2.	Hostas come in many colors. Green, yellow, and blue with all imaginable types of variegation and red trim, hostas are a colorful lot. Colors make them more collectable. They allow specialization and hope, “maybe I can get all the gold hostas.” They allow endless combinations of color in the shade garden.
	3.	Hostas have fragrant flowers. There is nothing like watching those long, pure white tubes of H. plantaginea slowly open in the dusk of a warm August evening and then walking through the garden in the dark, guided only by your sense of smell. Bare feet make the sensation complete.
	4.	Hostas can be huge. There is nothing like a giant hosta clump large enough to fill the bed of a full-size pick-up truck. While the height and girth of the clump are amazing in themselves, it is the individual leaves, once picked, that really impress me. Their texture, their substance, their broad leaf blades, as large as platters, are irresistible to the touch. WOW!
	5.	Hostas come with names. A good name can make a hosta great, a bad name can lead it into obscurity. Names can be fun or just hard to spell. They can be short or too long for a plastic label. Sometimes hosta names are more collectable than the hostas themselves. Names can be a marketing tool, but I think the name should look like the hosta, like ‘Guacamole’ or ‘Orange Marmalade’.
	6.	Hostas are event promoters. Plant enough hostas in any community and pretty soon people will gather to visit them. There are city-wide garden tours, regional meetings and of course, the AHS National Convention. Attendees may say they come to see the people but the hostas are really the drawing card. There is something breath-taking about a perfectly manicured hosta garden at its prime.
	7.	Hostas are a botanically diverse group. Whether you believe there are 18 or 50 hosta species, you have to admit that is a lot of genetic material to play with. No, we are not talking orchids here, but the fact is that all these hostas species interbreed to some extent and we will be able to produce a very wide range of both foliage and flower types from this vast gene pool. The best is yet to come!
	8.	Hostas are intellectually stimulating. There is only so much you can learn about Lincoln pennies. Hostas, however, seem to be changing all the time. As much as we think we know about them, we have really just begun to scratch the surface. There is so much left to learn and the best way to learn about hostas is to live with them. They will teach you something new every day, if you let them.
	9.	Hostas have great owners. There is something very special about hosta folks. They are kind, caring, generous and quick to infect you with the “hosta bug”. As shade gardeners they tend to be “laid back” and willing to listen. Whether one-on-one in a garden or in the crowded push of the vending room when it first opens at the Convention, hosta people are the greatest group of folks that I have known.
	10.	Hostas are photogenic. Whole clumps of hostas are magnificent mounds of color, texture and substance each with its leaves arranged in an orderly fashion. Drifts of these create carpets of color and rivers for the eye to float downstream. Whole hostas make elegant portraits but it is the individual parts of plants that are the most intriguing. The inside of a purple-striped flower, the inflorescence as it unfolds, and the ripples of the leaf margin, large as ocean waves, are details that make for great photography. Try to catch on film sunlight refracting through a fresh, bright yellow leaf of ‘Whiskey Sour’ in early spring.
	11.	Hostas are the sole subjects of several publications. From The Hosta Journal to the “Gossip Jr.” and in the many books published in the last 20 years, hostas have become literary stars. New hosta books in several languages seem to be appearing almost yearly now, making hosta books as collectable as the plants themselves. I used to think I could get all of them, too.
	12.	Hostas bloom late. After scorching summer’s heat has passed and the first leaves begin to fall, several hostas bloom. The purple flowers of ‘One Man’s Treasure’ are a welcome treat in late August, only to be surpassed by the forked scapes of ‘Corkscrew’ a month later. As my hybridizing program pushes the bloom time later and later in the summer and into fall, many of our new hostas will be late bloomers with foliage that looks good until frost.
	13.	Hostas are great in containers. There is nothing better than the security of a pot as the permanent home for your hosta. They not only grow great in pots but they look good doing it. Whether it is a black nursery pot on the back deck, a mixed planting with a hosta as the anchor in a $50 urn or a hypertufa trough full of minis, hostas love containers.
	14.	Hostas are often served with food! Where hosta folks congregate, food is usually in abundance. I can not always remember which hostas I saw at which convention but I can usually remember what we ate along the way. Although the hotel banquet food is usually very good, it is the home baked goodies in the gardens that often steal the show. If you hear of a “pot luck” hosta meeting, even in January, be sure to be first in line.
	15.	Hostas make white wax. White wax makes blue hostas and there is nothing cooler than a blue hosta on a bright crisp day in early spring. Blue flowers are unusual but blue leaves are rare. Planted next to a gold hosta, a blue hosta will easily outshine it when the wax is really flowing. I do not care if they do become green hostas in summer, blue hostas are my favorites.
	16.	Hostas provide therapy. There is something calming about a hosta garden, especially in mid-summer. It is a peaceful place out of the sun where the weeds are slow to grow. Maybe it is their blue and green colors, or their aristocratic stature but hostas bring order to the garden, every one neatly in its place. Plant a hosta garden, get your hands dirty and sit in the shade, and your problems will seem farther away.
	17.	Hostas can be tiny. Miniature hostas are cute, little babies that will grow in a thimble. They often run in herds through rock gardens, around ponds or along the edge of the path. Minis are especially happy in tiny containers, strawberry pots, troughs, or even whiskey barrels. Hundreds of them can live comfortably along the edge of the driveway. Hosta gardening has never been easier, just add water.
	18.	Hostas can be science fair projects. To be honest, hosta science is not anywhere close to rocket science. That is a good thing because few of us are rocket scientists. Most of what we know about hostas is from observing them, living with them, not from experimentation. Even the DNA studies only hint at relationships between hostas as the hosta genome is virtually unknown. This gives the scientists among us plenty of room to work. The rest of us intuitively know when they are right on the mark.
	19.	Hostas can be a business. Hostas are “high profit” perennials, perfect for that backyard nursery. New plants are readily available inexpensively as liners and later plants can be divided. Larger plants can be purchased “bare root” and often sold in the same season, eliminating over-wintering costs. Very few growers make a living from just growing hostas. The jury is still out as to whether that is possible.
	20.	Hostas are travel agents. If you love hostas, you will follow them to the ends of the earth. While the vast United States is the home to most of the 6000 hostas with names, seeking the next great hosta or hosta garden can take you to any continent but Antarctica. Begin in your own neighborhood, call an AHS member in the directory, and then move up to a regional meeting. Eventually you will have to travel to Mecca, Van Wade’s garden. Look for hostas where ever you go, you will find them in the strangest places. If you are ever in my neighborhood give me a call. Even in the winter there is always something to see.
	21.	Hostas come with accessories. Not that long ago, hosta gear was rare but not any longer. I can not wear out my hosta T-shirts as fast as new ones keep appearing. I need to take a year off from collecting them. There is jewelry, candles, coasters, as well as pottery and painted concrete leaves. I won a beautiful stained glass hosta, (not Hosta ‘Stained Glass’), at an auction one year. We have almost accumulated enough hosta stuff to decorate the guest bedroom completely in a hosta motif.
	22.	Hostas change colors. I know some of you do not like this but I love it. There is nothing as wonderful as a hosta that emerges bright translucent yellow in the spring. Yes, it later turns chartreuse or even lime green when the first hot days come, but if it did not it would die. I am less thrilled with yellow hosta margins that turn cream, but that may appeal to your taste more than mine. Hostas are chameleons and I am continually amazed.
	23.	Hostas come with friends. Hostas have been correctly called the “Friendship Plant”. Some of the best friends that I have, have found their way to me because of our mutual interest in hostas. Some I have pursued and some have chosen me, but with all, our relationship goes much farther than just the plant. It may be because we met under the therapeutic effect of hostas in a garden.
	24.	Hostas are our friends. I believe there is a spiritual relationship between hostas and humans. We really do love them in some magical way. We share our lives with them, the joys of spring, the stress of summer, the sadness of autumn and the hope-filled dreams of winter. They are friends that give back more than they take. They make us feel good about ourselves.
	25.	Hostas emerge magically in the spring. No one can argue that this is the number one reason we grow hostas. For three or four weeks in the spring, hostas entrance us. We get caught up in the spirit of spring renewal, freshness and purity, resurrection. Hostas more than any plant I know relish in this explosion of rebirth. Picture a seven foot clump of ‘Sum and Substance’ expanding rapidly enough to make a full clump from bare soil in 2-3 weeks. You can almost watch it grow. And when those huge leaves begin to unfurl, goose bumps will run up and down your spine.

Copyright (c) Green Hill Farm Inc. 2005, 2006 Revised December 2, 2006

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