Hostas are among the best-selling of all herbaceous perennials. Trouble is, slugs and snails love them too
The hostas are flowering now. They're not a plant that one thinks of much as a bloomer, so when they hoist up their lavender, mauve or white trumpets at this time of the year it's a welcome surprise. Rather than the flowers - unexpected treats that they are - it's the foliage that places hostas among the loveliest of all garden plants.
They come in all sizes, from the dainty miniatures such as H. venusta and 'Popo', to the paddle-leaved whoppers such as 'Sum and Substance' and H. sieboldiana var. elegans. The latter, despite having been around for the best part of a century, is one of the finest of all hostas.
It has massive, quilted, luxurious foliage of a misty blue-grey, a magical hue that makes the plants appear to recede into the distance - a useful trick for adding depth to a garden. It's a great big cliché of a plant, but one I can't get enough of.
Unfortunately, I have to enjoy this most shapely of leafy individuals in other people's gardens, as my own patch is too dry for it to build up into the tiers of overblown, overlapping leaves that make it such a voluptuous thing.
Hostas are natives of Japan, China and Korea, where they grow mainly in misty, damp meadows or on woodland edges. In our climate, most of them are happiest in a moist (but not soggy) soil with lots of organic matter: mulch them in autumn with well-rotted manure or leafmould, and give them a auxiliary feed of pelleted chicken manure in spring. Almost all hostas are happy in shade or dappled sunlight.
Those with glaucous leaves loose their "bloom" (the powdery sheen) if they are exposed to too much sun or rain, and some of the white-rimmed ones can scorch in bright sun. H. plantaginea, however, which comes from southern China, is quite happy in full sun, as long as it gets plenty of moisture. One of the few species with scented flowers, it has spawned many fragrant hybrids, including 'Diana Remembered', 'Guacamole' and 'So Sweet'.
All three of the above have variegated foliage, which brings me to the subject of multicoloured leaves. In general, I'm not a fan of the striped or mottled plant. But some hostas are quite elegantly marked. There are hundreds to choose from (there are more than 1,000 hosta varieties, and at least half are some class of green combined with white or yellow). To those of us who are not deeply hosta-aware, many of them tend to merge together into one big pot of stripy leaves. Hosta aficionados probably turn their noses up at the readily-available 'Albomarginata'; nonetheless, I think it has nice white edges, and a pleasant shape.
But if I were to choose a single variegated hosta it would probably be 'June'. It has blue edges and a central flame of several lime-green-greys. If you grow it in the sun, the pale green bits lose some of their chlorophyll, and become a brassy yellow. It is more mellow and - to my mind - much more handsome when grown in the shade. 'June' has quite tough leaves, so it is not as susceptible to slug damage as some of the more lightweight kinds. Blue-foliaged hostas and those with longer stalks are also reputed to be less attractive to the slimy creatures. But, as everyone who has ever hopefully dug a hole and popped a hosta into it knows, no member of this elegant genus is entirely mollusc-proof. If you grow them, you have to take prophylactic measures (see panel).
Hostas are among the best-selling of all herbaceous perennials. Canny breeders are pumping out new cultivars all the time to satisfy the hunger, especially in the US - where tiny plants of new varieties regularly sell for more than $100. Which is a lot of money to spend on slug food. .
New and unusual hostas are available at Camolin Potting Shed, Camolin, Gorey, Co Wexford (053-9383629; www.camolinpottingshed.com)