Spring Plant Sale Preview: Hostas

Hosta 'Island Breeze'

By Annie Yang
Duke T'20
Photos by Beth Hall

Hostas come in more than 2,500 different cultivars of different shapes, colors, sizes and textures, opening up an vast range of possibilities of integrating them into your garden. They can work well grouped together as background plants, but their exciting colors also make them great ornamentals.

These perennials are low-maintenance and usually live quite long. Hostas have a reputation for being shade plants, but the brighter the leaf color, the more sun it will require. In general, hostas require watering once a week at the soil and not on the leaves. Hostas are relatively pest-free—aside from slugs and the occasional deer—and they will also attract hummingbirds to your garden. There are thousands of hosta cultivars. Here are a few that we’ll be featuring at the 2018 Spring Plant Sale on April 7.

‘Dancing Queen’ 

Hosta 'Dancing Queen'

Unlike other yellow hosta varieties, ‘Dancing Queen’ keeps the excitement going and stays bright yellow all season long. Though hosta’s foliage is usually the star of the show, the mid to late summer blooms of pale lavender flowers are nothing to ignore!

‘Stained Glass’
The glossy gold leaves and green borders of this plant may remind you of the colorful designs on large stained-glass windows. Hosta ‘Stained Glass’ grows huge leaves and large, fragrant light purple flowers in the late summer. This cultivar is also more tolerant of sun than its cousins are.

‘Island Breeze’
The yellow centers and thick green margins of ‘Island Breeze’s’ foliage evoke a sense of tropical tranquility. When grown in darker shade, the yellows will become more chartreuses. But if exposed to more light, ‘Island Breeze’ will also lighten in color. It’s visually quite similar to its cousin ‘Stained Glass’, but an observant eye will notice that the leafstalks of ‘Island Breeze’ are also tinged in red.

EVEN MORE HOSTAS! Specialty hosta grower Green Hill Farm will also be a vendor at our plant sale. See additional specialty vendors at our plant sale link below.

SPRING PLANT SALE INFO:
Date: Saturday, April 7, 2018
Time: 8 a.m.-noon
Preview sale for members: Friday, April 6, 4-6 pm.
Membership plant sale benefit: Duke Gardens members get 10% off & a full list of plants in advance! Join online or on site.
Parking: Free.
Pets not permitted
Wagons + boxes: Our supply is limited; please bring your own if possible, and you'll have more time to spend gathering beautiful plants.
Your support helps Duke Gardens to provide summer internships to aspiring horticulturists from across the nation.
Please see our event page for more information, and we'd love for you to spread the word by sharing the event on Facebook and inviting your friends.
Thank you!

Class Preview: Make Your Garden Sing

Add "music" to your garden with ornamental grasses.
Photo by Bob Ayers.

By Rose James T'20

Plants whisper, seed pods clack and the wind rustles through leaves outside your door. A bird trills and a frog croaks, perhaps bringing you back to childhood games of hide and seek in your favorite neighborhood garden. A nearby brook bubbling might bring you back to a pleasant afternoon catching toads with your cousins or fishing with your grandfather.

Plants that attract birds will make your garden sing.
Photo by Charles Twine.

Our sense of sound is one of the strongest triggers for memories. A sound can bring to mind a person or place that you loved, or a favorite pastime. Sometimes this can be a happy accident. But like a composer, you can also shape your own environmental symphony to spark joyful memories or create new ones.

Whether your garden spans many acres or a small bed, consider adding sound to your design principles of form, function and color. Hilary Nichols can help you weave those sounds in a new two-session class at Duke Gardens, “I Need a Plan: The Musical Garden.”

Nichols is garden manager at the Durham nonprofit SEEDS, an urban sanctuary focused on promoting the principles and practice of sustainable agriculture, organic gardening, food security and environmental stewardship. She strives to live her life intentionally, and she loves sharing her design and horticultural expertise to help gardeners at all ability levels create gardens that sing to ears and eyes alike.

Streams and rain gardens are perfect to add a croaking frog
or two to your chorus. Photo by Sue Lannon.

The plants you choose, and the way you arrange your plants, will influence the musicality of your garden, Nichols says. Enjoy the wind strumming the blades of ornamental grasses or rattling autumn leaves. Place a large-leafed plant near your favorite window to enjoy the rain pattering on the leaves. Select plants that attract insects or birds to add a percussive buzz and lilting song. Study the life-cycle of your plants to create a garden in bloom throughout the year, drawing animals to your garden in different seasons.

Sign up for “The Musical Garden” and Nichols will have your garden singing in no time.

“I Need a Plan: The Musical Garden” meets on two Tuesdays, Oct. 11 and 18, from 6:30-9 p.m. To register, or for more information, please call 919-668-1707 or email gardenseducation@duke.edu.

Blogger Rose James is a Duke freshman and work-study marketing assistant at Duke Gardens.