HI Erin! Welcome to the wonderful fun of gardening and also, bless you in your new home! Where are you located? Are you thinking of only planting hostas or are you thinking of having a few other plants in there with them? Some contrast and especially color when the hostas are not blooming makes everything look really nice. Hostas are quite happy to have friends among them. My lot is .1 acre and that includes the house. So I do not not get hundreds of hostas or anything else (except slugs). It is pretty shady from my neighbors' trees though the bed in front of the house is in full sun. That is where daylilies and irises go. But I do have at least 25 cultivars of hostas and am planning some more. The advantage to a small garden is you have to plan what you put in it -- or else be prepared to pull out things to give away so you can make room for new acquisitions. And divisions from your older plants! The fun is, you don't get everything at once that you will ever have. Wait a while and put things in a few at a time (annuals will do to fill in places) and then you can have the pleasure of learning about new species and cultivars and acquiring them as the years go by. You will get different plants, hostas or otherwise, from various sources and they will always remind you of the person who gave it to you, swapped with you, or the trip you took when you bought one or another plant(s). I like to have some color spotted here & there so I use impatiens (I can hear the perennial people groaning) and I also have some Heron's Pirouette perennial begonias---these get about 2.5-3" tall when they bloom and have long lasting scapes ( flower stalks), arching gracefully --- here, from Aug till frost. In May, there is old fashioned bleeding heart -- both white and pink/white. These die back in the heat of summer so the hostas, which are getting big, fill in the bare spots the bleeding hearts left. I have a few liriope here & there because they are OK with dry shade & tree roots, and they are not boring if you only use a couple. You can get them with several shades of variegated foliage, and white or medium or dark blue flowers. And they bloom in very late summer/fall when not much else does, in the shady garden. I live in NJ overlooking the Delaware R just north of Trenton. I use astilbe, too--from white to pink to deep red frothy flowers in late spring and early summer. They are also beautiful with the hostas. Right now there are crocuses that have just opened yesterday (when it was sunny) and there will be squills and grape hyacinths, and daffodils are in the sunnier spots. I don't bother with tulips---though I love them, they are an expensive way to feed deer. I have lily of valley under the Norway spruce tree (which has had its lower branches removed to give sun to the bed under it) this is a rather dry shade bed---however the trunk of the spruce is ringed with Gold Standard hostas that are quite happy. The bed gets compost thrown over it every spring and it has sweet woodruff in there along with the hostas, and little spring bulbs such as crocuses & squills, and bigger ones ie English bluebells. Lily of the valley would like to take over the world, but there is easy way to stop it---dig some out. After it blooms, so you can have the wonderful flowers! I try to always have something blooming somewhere in the yard. It does not have to be a lot, just a bit--some white or pink flowered thing next to a dark leaved hosta brightens the corner. I have scilla Hispanica which is "wood hyacinths" -- you can get them in pink, white or blue, and they are very shade tolerant. They will bloom in May (here) and do very well next to hostas too. When the hosta leaves get bigger, the scilla is dying back for the summer. In our yard we have red shale which breaks down to clay in some parts, and what the locals call "the brown sand" in the other areas. In one little lot! Some kind of interesting geology was going on here a long time ago! We now have dark black soil over both, after years of digging in manure, leaves, & compost. You can ameliorate clay quite a lot with gypsum. We dig our yard's leaves right into our beds, around the plants, in fall. When we make a new bed, which we did a lot of after we got the new septic system, we take three years to do this digging, instead of planting things right away. The soil in those beds is wonderful. We also have a compost bin in the back corner---this is not rocket science and do not let compost hobbyists scare you! All you have to do is make a circle a yard or more across with sturdy wire, and throw in the leaves, weeds, and the non-meat kitchen scraps. Also grass clippings if you do not put weed killer and poisons on the lawn. Kitchen stuff meaning plant material such as peels, rinds, stems, leftover salad or other veggies that waited too long in the fridge to be eaten, and cut up toilet paper rollers. Turn it twice a year and when you turn it, take the well-composted stuff out & use it in your garden. When the ground is warm in summer, we just take the kitchen compost bowl out & dig the stuff right into the garden next to the plants. It breaks down very quickly in summer and the nutrition goes right into the plants. You said you have children---by all means, set aside a place for their own garden! Especially if you can make it in a sunny area. Let them plant veggies (then they will eat them) and make it easy ones such as lettuce and beans. You can grow beans as a little tent to save space. Or you can make a taller "tepee" with poles and leave an opening for the kids to crawl in under the beans. You can take a potato from the farmer's market (the organic stand; it won't have been sprayed with anti-sprouting stuff) and cut it up so the pieces have eyes. Just stick them in the ground a few feet apart. Then the kids can have their own potato plants. Well, you have heard enough from me! Once again, welcome to years & years of great fun!

Andy - I have posted an apology in the - has anybody bought from Contrary Mary's posting and will repeat it here. As soon as I hit the submit button I regretted it. My apologies to you Andy! I am not a long time forum member, nor am I a cliqueish (how in the world is that word spelled?) person - nor is Hosta forum such a group of people. I was unusually tactless in how I responded and this usually is not my nature. I can be a bit of a "pot stirrer" at times but it is in the interest to stimulate others opinions being expressed (which certainly happened in this case) and not done with malice. I also apologize to Mary. I have no idea why she calls herself contrary. There is absolutely no connection between her and the course the two threads had taken, which largely rests squarely on my shoulders. She is doing a very fine job in her business and is a very nice and friendly person. And finally my apologies to the long time forum members who may have been offended or cast in a bad light by my indiscretion. My deepest regards to all of you: Les

Hi all! I'm Michelle from Saskatchewan and I'm very new to this forum. Started out searching on the computer for hosta problems and like somebody else said was always directed to this site. For two weeks I just read what people posted and then I decided it was time to join. Everybody on here has been so helpful to me, because I had or maybe still have the dreaded HVX virus. Very disheartening. I've always liked gardening somewhat but was mainly annuals in containers. I have pine trees in my yard and never knew what to do there. We dug a pond and what do you do with all the extra dirt?? Shoved it under the pine trees and decided to make flower beds. That was maybe four years ago. Hostas caught my eye and I bought a few and some ferns and coral bells etc. The hostas have now taken over my life as I can't get enough. I was the kind of person that just bought what looked good at box stores and nurseries here. Now that I caught the darn HVX I will not do that anymore. I am into the collecting of different names now even though I have MANY with no names from the start. I have also learned on here that in my Zone I can plant more hostas in the sun. Annie posted about squishiness and hard to plant far apart, well I am kind of like her too. Ive planted small hostas too close to one another and as they get more mature its obvious I have to move to a new location. Ahhh but its so much fun. I have over 250 hostas in my backyard and still growing with new varieties and hostas I don't have which is many. Love the hostas, love the forum and all the friendly people that have given me great advice.

Maow, you should be able to load one photo per post using the Chrome browser with no issues. Perhaps GW was having an issue earlier? You can also load the pics directly from your phone or iPad directly into a post using the same functionality as you would with a computer. Simply browse for the picture you want to post. An app I use on my iPhone and iPad called PhotoGrid would allow you to add text directly to a photo very easily. You can adjust the font, size and color of the text quite easily within the app. You can also add borders to your photos and do a lot of other editing, including creating collages with multiple pictures. I am attaching an example with a picture I had on my iPad. Welcome to the hosta club ðÂÂÂ. ~Angie