Type

Flower · Perennial

Botanical family

Mixed / other

Foliage color

Blue-green · Green

Flower color

Purple and violet

Sunlight

Partial to full shade, with the blue-leaved kinds wanting the deepest.

Watering

Consistent moisture is essential; water deeply through dry spells.

Feeding

A balanced feed in spring, with a generous compost mulch.

Frost tolerant

Yes

Flowering

July

Pruning

Take off the spent flowers, and cut dead foliage away in late autumn.

• Apr–Jul Spring Growth
• Jul–Sep Flowering
• Sep–Oct Growing
• Oct–Dec Leaf Fall
• Jan–Apr Leaf Fall

Plant spacing

2 ft 6 in

In-row spacing

2 ft 6 in

Between rows

3 ft 1 in

Square-foot density

Not suited to SFG

Root system

A fleshy crown with thick perennial roots

Working depth

12 in–3 ft

Can reach

5 ft down where the soil allows

Spread

2.5–3.5 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant

Shallowest pot

18 in of soil

The crown is the plant’s bank account and it is slow to rebuild, which is why a new planting is left unpicked for a season or two. Plant it at the depth it asks for and no deeper; these rot from being buried far more often than they suffer from being shallow.

Thick fleshy roots and a dense crown that make an old clump very heavy to lift and easiest divided with a spade straight down through it. Vine weevil grubs eat those roots from below, which is what is happening when a healthy hosta suddenly lifts out of the ground.

The habit is Hosta’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.

• Vine weevil Vine weevil in the crown and roots
• Slugs & snails Slugs and snails, far and away the main trouble
• Hosta virus X Ink-bleed mottling that follows the veins of a hosta leaf, spread almost entirely by sap on tools. Some of it was sold deliberately as a variegation.

Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. ★ companion plant

• Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.
  Hunts Vine weevilSlugs & snails

  Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.

• Frogs & toads Anura
  Hunts Slugs & snailsVine weevil

  A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.

• Ground beetle Carabidae
  Hunts Slugs & snailsVine weevil

  Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.

  Plant nearby LavenderMintThyme
• Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus
  Hunts Slugs & snailsVine weevil

  A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.

• Centipedes Chilopoda
  Hunts Slugs & snails

  Flat, fast, one pair of legs to a segment — and a predator, unlike the slow round millipede it is constantly confused with. It hunts slugs, cutworms, springtails and woodlice by night under mulch and stones. Learn the difference and leave this one alone.

• Garden birds Passeriformes
  Hunts Slugs & snails

  Both things are true: birds strip your currants and a brood of blue tits takes several thousand caterpillars out of one fruit tree in a fortnight. Net what you must and welcome them everywhere else — a nest box near the apples is worth more than a spray.

  Plant nearby EchinaceaElderberryEnglish hollyGoldenrodRudbeckiaSunflowerTeaselViburnum
• Rove beetle Staphylinidae
  Hunts Slugs & snails

  Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.

  Plant nearby MintThyme
• Salamanders & newts Caudata
  Hunts Slugs & snails

  Damp-loving hunters of slugs, worms, woodlice and beetle larvae that spend the day under a log or a stone and work the beds at night. Companions to the toads: they want the same damp shade, the same log pile, and the same absence of slug pellets.

• Snakes & lizards Colubridae & Phrynosomatidae
  Hunts Slugs & snails

  A garter snake works the beds for slugs and voles and a fence lizard clears grasshoppers off a sunny wall. Almost every snake a gardener meets is harmless and useful; give them a log pile, a warm flat stone and a bit of cover and they stay.

Ferns, Astilbe, Heuchera, Brunnera

Green-leaved flowers, like this one.

• Toad Lily
• Cranesbill
• Liriope