North Coast Hosta Society
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North Coast Hosta Society |
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HYBRIDIZERS MEETING It was a day met with great anticipation- would the hostas look good? How many people would show up? What about the food, etc.? Thanks to our club members everything came out great! Our members came on Saturday and setup the tents, weeded, trimmed, moved tables and chairs and basically did everything. Ray and his helpers prepared the guest plants and the plants from Michigan. Sunday morning came with sunshine and so did over 60 hosta lovers. They came with auction plants, they came with seedlings, they came with cameras, they came with appetites, they came seeking new hosta friends and they found everything. We were honored with guests from five states, with Pete Ruh, Bill Zumbar and his wife, Van Wade, our own Bob Kuk and many up and coming, new hybridizers. What a delight! The auction raised over $2,000 for the hybridizer’s club. The seedling contest boasted first and second year seedlings and I know you will be buying a few of these in the near future. I had my eye a few. The food was excellent with special thanks to Joe ‘The Gourd Man’ Dwyer. Joe now has me interested in growing and drying gourds - just one more adventure. We missed our leader Ed Elslager, but some minor surgery kept him at home. He is fine now and sends his regrets to all. I received many emails and written notes of thanks. The thanks really goes to the Northcoast Hosta Society for all their assistance. Hosta people are the best!
Jon Soucek back
It's the middle of the season. Rachel and I are moving pollen around the Hosta hoping to make that one cross producing a new and exciting Hosta. The National Convention was grand and I invite everyone to consider Iowa next year. It’s an easy drive and at least one special garden is on tour. Mrs. Woods’ garden features every cultivar hybridized and grown by Herb Benedict. I guarantee this is a one time only chance to see hosta like ‘Blast Off’ and ‘Go Dorothy Go’ and others-what a treat. Many thanks go to our club’s members for helping to host the hybridizers’ event. A good time was had by all. Please consider joining the hybridizers club. We meet several times a year with an auction, seedling contest and guest lectures on Hosta. We cover growing, fertilizing, increasing, disease and garden topics. So you see, it isn’t all highly technical subjects. The best part is you meet new hosta friends and you learn about the plant you love. Also, you have the opportunity to be with the experts and ask first hand questions you have about hosta. As you observed on Sunday, it is a good group. Up and coming events are discussed in this newsletter. I hope everyone who attended the auction enjoyed themselves. I am constantly amazed at how quickly we are growing and the quality of our events. It truly reflects the quality of our members. We need each member to make ONE NEW HOSTA FRIEND and bring them to our club. We would double our membership! Thanks to all and good gardening. Jon Soucek back
EDITOR’S LETTERIt's been a very busy summer, and now it is August. The “dog days” have arrived, and it’s time to sit back, enjoy the labors of our gardens and the beauty of our hostas. With the loss of one of my large old silver maples in June, I have found some interesting thoughts go through my head. I did not plant under the maple due to the shallow roots, however the tree certainly shaded much of my front yard. I was glad that the tree service left me all the wood chips - now I have plenty of mulch. Although it’s fresh wood chips, it will break down soon enough, and my plants will be very happy. The loss of the tree enables me to go and purchase the Cucumber Magnolia that I’ve dreamed of. Not-so-shallow roots, and plenty of space to plant under that. It’ll be far better, and I’m looking forward to that. I hope everyone’s summer has been enjoyable, and that the recent events were fun. The Hybridizer’s meeting, garden tours, and auction I know were enjoyed by all. A special thanks goes out to everyone who contributed articles to our newsletter. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. We have a great group who just loves to be involved, and we only continue to become a stronger group. Diane Frederick back
Our plans for the Convention began several weeks earlier, having traveled to this area many times to visit relatives. The Washington, DC area can present problems with road construction and sultry weather. I told Eileen to pack lightweight clothing to combat the sticky, humid weather usually encountered in the Potomac Basin. However, when we left on Wednesday morning it was cool and cloudy and the weather experts called for few showers in the DC area. Driving through Pennsylvania we talked about the DC traffic jambs encountered on every trip we had taken and wondered what would happen to the tour busses in such traffic. All our worst fears came true. The DC area experienced 20 inches of rain flooding roads, underpasses, and even the home basement of a host tour garden! On the Friday tour day we could not get off the bus at one tour garden to due monsoon type rains and had to cancel another stop due to heavy rains and traffic problems. Saturday, however, was clear and the gardens were great. The rains also cooledoff the temperatures and I wish we had packed a jacket! My personnel garden favorites were the National Arboretum-Japanese garden, Broussard garden in the rain, and Sandie Markland. The Markland garden was the front and backyard of a townhouse complex and perhaps the smallest tour garden in National’s history! However, it was skillfully done with two hundred hosta varieties, including some huge hosta, perennials and Japanese maple. It was truly a delight and a fine example of what can be accomplished in such a small area. Look for photos in an upcoming AHS Journal. It was raining, of course, and my photos may not be too good. Despite the rain and traffic jambs, it was a great convention. I always enjoy meeting old friends, bidding at the auction for ANOTHER hosta, purchasing ANOTHER hosta at vending, and, above all, talking HOSTA with friends. Saying adieu to DC, we traveled to our friends in North Carolina. I met the Jones’ at the Peoria Convention five years ago and have been friends ever since. They provide me with some guest plants of new hosta introductions for the 2005 convention. They are all exciting especially H. ‘Three Coins’ and H. ‘Mr. Watson’. Well, we arrived home with the pickup truck FULL! Imagine that! I will count the days until next year and the Iowa convention. I hear they not only grow corn, but Hosta as well. See you all in Iowa. Jon Soucek back Kingwood Center Club Plant Sale & AuctionSunday, July 20, 2003 dawned clear and bright a beautiful day for North Coast Hosta Society of Ohio to hold it’s 3rd annual auction and plant sale. Many fine varieties of Hosta and related perennials were provided for this auction by the following. Pete and Jean Ruh of Sunnybrook Farms; Van and Shirley Wade of Wade & Gatton Nursery; Doug and Mardy Beilstein of The Blueberry Patch; Rich Bartsche of Cahoon’s Nursery; Jim and Mary Brady of Sunbeam Gardens; Bob Kuk of Kuk’s Forest Nursery and Jon Soucek of Angelica Gardens.Van Wade, Doug Beilstein and Bob Kuk brought their respective plants directly to the auction. An additional guest present was Bob Solberg who was traveling in the area and graciously attended. Without the support of these fine individuals our auction would not have been a success. We wish to THANK all of the above again for their continued support along with those members who also donated plants. We would ask the membership that when you are purchasing Hosta or other plant material to patronize these fine individuals to show our continued appreciation for their generosity. Another fun part of the event was when the doors opened at 11:30 for our plant sale. People streamed into the hall looking over the plants available and finding that particular one Hosta or Perennial that they wanted to add to their gardens. Our auction was started promptly at 1:00PM by Gary Bowers, our auctioneer. During the course of the day some spirited bidding took place as people looked to add some of these quality plants to their gardens. An additional THANK YOU to all members who worked at the auction for without you it would not have been possible. Jim Spuhler back
GARDEN AESTHETICS PART I AND II Sometime I would like to create a profile of a HOSTA COLLECTOR and the profile of an ordinary gardener who enjoys hostas and has perhaps 10 or 20 in his/her garden. The psychological divide between these two groups goes to the heart of good and evil in the 21st century. However, I will save that for another time. The branch of garden aesthetics I want to write about provides the same cannon fodder for a war that continues to be fought in every garden in this great country. If this were a special documentary by Ken Burns on “Gardens in America”, you would now be listening to “America the Beautiful” as hummed by the Vienna Boys’ Choir...with an accordion playing softly.…..But not today. What I am going to write about is another great divide. This divide is wonderfully illustrated in the world of hostas, but it exists with most all of the annuals and perennials with which we populate our gardens. The problem is a Puritan/Purist problem that has haunted us for 400 years. The Catholic Church has lectured at great length on the subject for eons. The French have strong feelings on the subject and the English are notoriously hypocritical about the topic as expressed in the Victorian Age. Early Americans dealt with it by using boards to divide the beds. Our Supreme Court has tried to deal with it by interpreting various parts of the constitution in the name of one side or the other in the great divide. Gardeners epitomize the problem. Always the voyeur, Darwin watched it take place inside one square yard on an English moor and took copious notes. And now, (to the music of Strauss’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”) is the problem for hosta folk and all other gardeners for that matter: “SHOULD ONE HOSTA BE ALLOWED TO HAVE ANOTHER HOSTA WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE?” Should hostas exist in solitary glory, grown to perfection and clumphood, or should they be allowed to mingle, touch, and stroke the leaves of their fellow hosta companions? Can H. ‘Big John’ be allowed to approach H. ‘Painted Lady”? If H. ‘Ryan’s Big One’ is seen at the outskirts of H. ‘Afternoon Delight’ can cross-pollination be far behind? The list is as endless and the names are provocative: H. ‘Purple Passion’, H. ‘Lakeside Love Affaire’, H. ‘Venus’, H. ‘Paul’s Glory’, H. ‘Aphrodite’, H. ‘Slick Willie’...this is all clearly the stuff best delivered in plain brown wrappers.
PART II I have NOW seen several of you profess the idea that each ofyour hostas (plants) should have its own spot. That each plant islocated with inviolate space around it, with its nametag undisguisedby foliage. I’ll bet you use those special expensive nametags that are engraved on ersatz wood grain tags too. I’ll bet you plan and plant your hostas like an art museum director hangs a treasured show. No leaf on one will touch another, nor the shadow of any plant cast a pall on the beauty of the other plants. Each plant/painting is an island unto itself. KNOW THIS. YOU ARE A FLAWED HUMAN BEING. I am here to say NAY to your anally retentive approach. NAY to the control freak that you have become. NAY, to the aesthetic that turns a garden into a museum. NAY! My hostas deserve to be free to mingle, to cohabit, to come and go, to caress and touch, to create, to procreate, to grow and commune in a natural environment. Don’t your hostas deserve the same? As a gardener how can you know the subtle pleasure and feel the tingle when seeing a heart-shaped gold leaf brush by and cross the path of a blue corrugated beauty? Would you pin that butterfly to a cork and put it on your shelf in a glass jar as a trophy of the hunt? The toads deserve a home. Crickets and other small creatures of the night (voles and moles) need cover for their work. Areal home. Your garden should not be a golf course with a plant/hosta on each green and neatly manicured lawns between. Are YOU a specimen? Or do you belong in the real world where you touch and are touched in return. Where life is conflict, battles and survival. Where on a good day you are part of a whole, which surpasses the order of any row. Eden was not about order, but a state of mind. Of course we know what happened there. Adam insisted on nametags and Eve was sure she had the perfect place for each plant. If you can resist this powerful aesthetic principal, which I have spelled out, I have a final set of killer questions for you. 1. How can one get 1,400 hostas into less than an acre and not have them touch? 2. How can you keep the weeds down if you allow all that space among your plants? 3. What fun is it if visitors to your garden can find the nametags? 4. If you can’t misplace at least 20 hostas a year, what is life about? Life is a jungle out there. You might just as well give in to it. Let the beast in you out into your jungle. Let it prowl in the undergrowth and discover just how bloody in tooth and claw nature really is/was: even in Darwin’s little patch of ground on the moor. DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU ARE IN CHARGE?
Glen Williams 20 Dewey St. Springfield, Vermont,05156 Tel: 802-885-2839
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