Thoughts off the top of my head: November 2019
Believe it or not I finally made it to the beach. Whenever things are really crazy at Green Hill Farm, I always threaten to run off to be beach. My employees never take me seriously because they know when things calm down, I will no longer feel the need to escape and never go. Well this year I finally did it and here I am on a writing vacation.
Some of you know that I am not all hostas 24/7, although they are never far from my thoughts as you can see by me writing this right now. Chasing waterfowl is my new hobby for about 5 years now. I love to watch ducks as much as watching hostas grow. (Take that however you wish.)
Being on a real vacation, I am doing vacation things like eating all the local seafood I can hold, crabs and oysters are king here, and doing a little shopping. So why am I telling you this, other than to make you wish you were here? I made the mistake of going into the decoy shop today and guess what, collecting decoys is just like collecting hostas and today I got a first-class education from a conch fisherman and decoy expert.
Of course, if you sell decoys, as with hostas, then you collect decoys. He and his wife have about 80, a fairly modest collection in hosta terms. The price points are a little different however, his full-size tundra swan decoy cost $10,000 and took the artist 14 months to make. There were decoys from 99 different carvers in their store some world famous and some just trying to be. Rare “birds” from the best artists bring a huge price, sort of like Mary Chastain’s “Lakeside” hostas. You can pay anything you want for a decoy in his store up to several thousand dollars. Unlike hostas they are an investment in fine art and usually increase in value since they do not multiply themselves like rabbits as hostas do.
I asked him, as so many hosta folks ask me, what should I buy? He replied, as I also do, “Buy what you like… and what you think you can afford.” So, I had him walk me around the shop and point out some characteristics by which to judge decoys. Like hostas, many are the same, color, texture, substance, form and character. Every carver has his or her own style just like hosta hybridizers, some produce folk art representations of the birds, some mimic the “working” decoys used in duck hunting, and some try to accurately reproduce nature. Once you know what to look for you can then begin to judge what you like and what you appreciate but would not take home.
So how does this work with hostas? We all think we know what we like but why? What characteristics are the most important to you, which do you love. Do you love any hosta with puckers or red petioles or maybe ruffles? Do you like variegation or weird all green hostas? Are hosta flowers what currently turns you on? I go through phases, most recently I have been crazy about hostas with ruffles. I know this is in the process of fading as I am now becoming infatuated by hostas with twisted leaves.
Do you favor certain hybridizers? Maybe Rod Kunsler’s streaked plants or Olga Pertrisyan’s huge classic clumps. Many of you seem to really like my yellow hostas with red into the leaf which is great because I do too. Do you find your self buying one color of hostas, like blue hostas, to the exclusion of all others some years? I used to say there is a cycle of collecting hosta colors. We are drawn to hostas because of their variegation and then we get the “blues”. At some point the garden seems like it needs to be brightened up and gold fever hits for a year or two. And then green hostas with interesting details, yes green hostas, become our favorites. Where it goes from there is based on what you like, at least this week.
A word about price. I could have come home with 20 decoys today, twenty different ducks, but I am not a beginning hosta collector and my mind does not work like a beginning decoy collector which is dangerous. I frequently pay $500 for a hosta. I am used to paying for quality when I think I see it. I had to decide did I want to pay more for something of higher value or amass a large collection quickly. As with hostas the novice consumer has no idea what the real value of the decoy is in their hands. It has a fair market price attached to it on a tag and you can either pay that price or put it down and wish you had not left it behind all the way home.
I suggest certainly with decoys, and also hostas, sometimes less is more. But judging true quality is difficult in a vacuum even with a seasoned guide. What makes a great hosta to me is one that has a rare combination of traits not often seen and/or these characteristics in extreme, the reddest petioles and the yellowest leaves in combination. Great hostas also have an artistic beauty, just like some decoys have more personality than others. In any case, if a hosta really speaks to you do not wait for the price to change. First, it may never change, or it may even go higher and second, life is too short. We should all have nice things if we can afford them.
I am not going to say how the trip to the decoy store turned out, but let’s just say I am now a decoy collector… and I will be bringing my lunch to work for a good long time.
So why do we collect hostas? For some I think it is all about the individual plants. Hostas are obtained one at a time because of their eye appeal, size, (miniatures and giants), name, or some other collecting criteria. They are probably destined to spend some time in a container since there is not a preplanned spot waiting for them in the garden. All the potted purchases of the season are then planted in the garden before the first frost, or are they? They may end up stacked in the garden shed for overwintering. While having a great hosta garden is important to these hosta collectors, it is having each hosta that is the most important.
On the other hand, there are hosta collectors and then there are hosta gardeners. While hostas are the focus of the garden, it is the garden that is the focus of the purchasing of hostas. A certain hosta, big or small, yellow or blue, upright or spreading, is needed for a certain location in the garden for the perfect artistic effect. Then the search begins for the perfect hosta for that spot. I have customers that have a picture in their mind of that hosta, not by name but by its characteristics. I may have one that fits that image well but if I do not have it, I can usually suggest a name or two that might work and then they just need to find a source.
There is a third group of hosta collectors I find. They are shade gardeners and hostas have a prominent role in their gardens. Their gardens are diverse with mini collections of unusual understory trees, spring wildflowers, ferns, and other shade loving perennials, maybe conifers. Some fill a naturalized scene, others a tranquil all-season garden. Their hosta needs may not be as specific has the hosta collector or the hosta gardener as hostas serve the function of totally deciduous shrubs in this landscape. Hostas, heaven forbid, may even be used in mass plantings. Yes, hosta gardens can be very diverse.
Any garden is a labor of love and an artistic expression of the gardener’s own personality. Sometimes though, we have to move. Maybe it is for a better job, maybe we are just downsizing, maybe it is for more garden space to grow hostas, or maybe it is for one of those unforeseen personal calamities that befall the best of us. I have moved my nursery twice and just left behind two display gardens to the new owners and the deer. But moving a hosta nursery is just moving a lot of pots, preferably in the winter when the hostas are dormant so that they can be stacked. Leaving a hosta garden can be heart wrenching.
When the time comes, most hosta growers have the “no hosta left behind” mentality. How do I take all my hostas with me? If you are lucky to be moving to a larger piece of real estate then it is just a matter of digging the clumps, putting them in plastic bags or containers, (the former stack better), and labeling them by either writing on the plastic bag or placing two labels per container. Labels have a way of jumping out of pots in transit. This might be a good time to divide some of the older clumps and offer pieces to the helpers you have needed to recruit.
What if they cannot all go to that new condo on the lake? Some hosta folks just take their miniature hostas and keep them on a shaded deck or patio. Some just take their very favorites, usually not their newest most expensive plants but those with sentimental value, usually some of their first. These may also become container plants but can often be squeezed in along the foundation of the house. Others offer to landscape the common areas or a school or public park. At least these old friends can be visited and maybe watered from time to time.
This is all well and good, but what if you have a very large hosta collection or even a world class collection of many one of a kind hostas? Do you leave it to the new owners who may or may not love hostas as much as you do? While not high maintenance, hosta beds require a lot more gardening effort than riding a John Deere mower for an hour or so on Saturday morning. Do you break the collection up and sell it off or give it away to local hosta club members? I do not know.
I believe that if we can not save our great hosta gardens intact, and we probably can save only a few, then we need to at least save the plants. Maybe like Noah we need to march two clumps of each hosta into a giant garden ark sponsored by the American Hosta Society somewhere in the Midwest or even a new foundation. Few if any Botanical Gardens have the funding to maintain such a collection but we need to try something. At least one quarter of the named hostas have already been lost it would be a shame to have a massive extinction of many others in the next decade.
Think about it, I am willing to help in any way I can.
As you know I name hostas for a living, pretty cool. With the great success of the ‘Blue Mouse Ears’ series of mouse names I have been thinking if mice work so well, what else would be equally appealing? No, I am not out of food names yet, ‘Lettuce Wrap’ is one of our headliners for 2020. But what would work as well as mice?
I think the key is not to use songbird names like robin, bluebird and chickadee, but use a name like bird and then supply a variety of adjectives to modify it, like ‘Songbird’, ‘Yard bird’, ‘Flippin’ the Bird’, well maybe not. What is then the perfect animal, fox, ‘Clever Fox’, ‘Silver Fox’, ‘Fox in the Hen House’? I do not know. Suggestions are welcome.
I have done a little of this with my series of sports from my large yellow hosta ‘Honey Pie’. There is ‘Honey Bear’ which has a green center, ‘Honey Bun’ that has a green margin and ‘Bear Necessities’ that is the all green form, which is a very nice large puckered, fragrant-flowered hosta by the way.
All this makes me think I may have been on vacation too long or maybe not quite long enough. Anyway, hostas are supposed to be fun.