Creative Ways to Use Hostas in Your Yard and Garden
Hostas are so incredibly tough and easy to grow, that they sometimes don’t get the respect they deserve. More than just problem solvers for shady areas where few other plants will survive, hostas offer gardeners an exciting palette of sizes, colors and textures.
Here are some of the many creative ways to use hostas around your home and in your garden.
Plant Hostas with Hostas
With so many different types of hostas to choose from, it’s easy to create a beautiful shade garden that contains nothing but hostas. If you do this, you’ll want cultivars that are different enough to be interesting, yet similar enough to look like they belong together. Strive for a tapestry of foliage with repeating shapes and colors.
As a general rule, large plantings of hostas should include mostly solid greens and blues. Create visual interest with variations in leaf sizes and textures. You’ll also want to incorporate some plants with variegated foliage, making sure it echoes the same green and blue hues.
Hostas with yellow foliage (both solid and variegated) add bright, unexpected color in the landscape. They’re best used as accent plants or grouped into drifts that snake their way through other plantings.
Pair Hostas with Spring Bulbs
Hostas are excellent companions for spring-blooming bulbs. They are relatively slow to emerge and start unfurling their leaves just as daffodils, scilla, crocus, fritillaria and other bulbs begin to fade away. Old-fashioned bleeding heart (Dicentra spectablis) is another good companion for hostas. Once these spring bloomers have finished flowering, the foliage dies back to the ground, leaving a gap behind. Hostas waste no time in quickly filling the space.
Pair Hostas with Shade-Tolerant Flowers
Hostas are attractive companions for other perennials such as astilbes, ferns, dicentra and heuchera. You can also pair them with shade-tolerant annuals such as impatiens, nicotiana, coleus, caladium and begonias.
When using hostas with flowering plants, look for opportunities to create color echoes. Consider pairing pale yellow Nicotiana langsdorfii with hosta Golden Tiara’s pale yellow leaf margins. Combine a white astilbe, aruncus or columbine with a green and white hosta like Patriot. Or positioning a burgundy-leaved heuchera near a richly-colored hellebore and a lime-green hosta like Sum and Substance.
Use Hostas as Ground Covers
Hostas are a good solution for shaded areas where there’s not enough sun to grow a healthy lawn. They are also far more interesting! It’s best to plant small-leaved, low-growing hosta separately from big-leaved cultivars. When planted side by side, small hosta will read as holes in the tapestry of foliage. Instead, plant them where they can be admired up close, such as at the edge of a path or beside some steps. They also look great in a partially shaded rock garden.
Plant Hostas in Containers
If you plant decorative containers for a shady porch or patio, consider incorporating hostas. Feature them alone in a pot or add them to a mixed container. Choose small or mid-size varieties so they don’t overwhelm their neighbors. Hosta foliage complements colorful annuals and will stay fresh all season.
You can purchase potted hostas in spring or simply use a sharp spade to cut off a piece of a plant that’s already in your garden. In northern areas, you’ll need to protect container-grown hostas from cold temperatures. The easiest way is to dig a hole and put the entire plant into the ground for the winter.
To learn more, you may be interested in reading: All About Hostas, 10 Easy Perennials for Shady Gardens, Best Ground Covers for Shade and Design Tips for Shady Gardens.
Thank you this is wonderful, we have a shady backyard with gradual slope to a small creek. I have a path winding through the trees with hostas planted, I can not wait for all to fill in with Jack n pulpits and ferns. Thank you again!
Kathy
Hi Kathy — your backyard sounds like a beautiful place to be! 🙂
I already grow hostas but what an interesting article and introduction to anyone thinking about growing hostas. Well done.
Hey John – Thanks for your nice note. Hope your hostas are looking beautiful!
So interesting I love hostas so your article is very instructing!
Many thanks to you !
Hi Bernadette – Thank you for your comment. Happy to know you found the article helpful! Have a great summer.
I’d love me to know more about hostas grown in post year to year. When to repot and what to fertilize with. Thanks.
Hi Karen, Most hosta are pretty vigorous growers — especially the big ones. It depends on which varieties you’re growing, but if they’re not a miniatures, you will probably need to repot them every year. Hosta grown in pots should be fertilized like other perennials. Put some in the soil when you are potting them up in the spring. As long as they are not too pot-bound, that should be enough. They should definitely not be fed weekly or monthly as you do with flowering annuals. Hope this helps!
My free range chickens are eating my hostas any ideas?
Hi Peggy – I don’t have chickens now, but when we did, we used to let them free range all day long. But as you have found, they can get into a lot of trouble in the garden. So we would only let them out in the evenings after work. When they were limited to two hours or so, they just ran around frantically from one thing to another and caused far less damage.
Thanks for this hosta information. It is so helpful. I would like to plant hostas around our backyard Maple tree. Although I am not sure the best way to do so. Kind of new to doing my own landscaping. My question is more to do with what is the best way to plant around a tree? Can you injure the tree by digging around it? Or do you add a bed of new dirt around it and then plant? And what do you advise as for how to make the bed so easy to mow around and trim?
Hi Lee Ann,
Here is a link to some good information based on research conducted at the University of Minnesota: Planting Under Shade Trees Here are the most important things to know when planting under trees: avoid damaging the tree roots; do not add a layer of soil on top of the tree roots; gently plant between the roots; do not cut into roots 2” or larger; add a layer of mulch around the plants that is no deeper than 2-4” thick.
If your tree is a Norway maple, the shade cover is too dense to grow much of anything underneath. For other types of maple trees, be aware that maples are very thirsty and will grab moisture ahead of most other plants. If you live where summers are dry, you’ll probably need to water your perennials to keep them from drying out. For maintain a neat edge and reduce the need for trimming, here’s my recommendation. Many years ago, I installed high quality plastic edging around most of my garden beds. It sits right at the soil surface, so is almost invisible and makes mowing very easy — I don’t own a trimmer. It has saved me tons of work. But maintaining an edge around trees is a bit different. Trees keep getting larger and the mulched area also keeps expanding. So for trees, I maintain a clean line between mulch and lawn by using a hand edger once or twice a year. Keep the mulch at or no more than two inches above grade — it’s best for the tree and makes mowing easy. Hope this helps.