Hostas do great under pine trees and you get free pine needle mulch every year to help keep the weeds down. My hosta garden is under a collection of pine trees and I rake up additional pine needles in the fall to spread around my plants that did not get enough. Plant away....and enjoy!!!

An additional, huge benefit is that slugs don't like to slither over pine needles. Nance

And those dried pine needles make a terrific background in Hosta Bob's photo too!

-Babka

My woodland garden is an old loblolly tree farm - you know where the trees are all in rows - there are some deciduous under story trees there now but it is primarily pine. My hostas do great there. There is high filtered sunlight and good clear air circulation w/o a mess of lower branches. I did and still am ammending the soil on a regular basis. In early spring before the hostas break ground we pull back all the pine straw in the designated beds and spread compost, some fert and then replace the pine straw. It requires very little maintenance after that other than raking the pathways of pinestraw and picking up dead brances after storms .....

Lynne

there will be only one problem ...

getting water into the soil ... once that is achieved.. you should be all set ...

under pines.. is can be nearly a desert ... in many circumstances ...

ken

Thanks everyone great info! Your right Ken I got started this evening and had to turn the sprinkler on awhile in order to dig. I allways heard those pine roots really would suck all the water out of the ground.

I planted a Sagae under a group of pines, and have never watered it, since the hose doesn't reach. It is my largest, best looking hosta, thriving on total neglect. I was so surprised, and am so proud of it.

Almost our entire Hosta garden of about 800 varieties are in an old CCC Red Pine Plantation. After 5 years or so we discovered that Red Pines have a very dense feeder root system too much like so many Maple trees that can choke Hostas to death. We've adopted a new planting regime, and a rescue program to keep everything going, but it's an on-going project. Oddly enough, we have a lone Jack Pine tree that does NOT have these choking near-surface dense feeder root systems, so those beds are wildly successful.

Sometimes it pays to dig into the area of intended planting and look and/or feel what's in that top ten inches. . .

Regards,

Mark, the Hosta Hillbilly, dug a lot of choking Hostas in the past several years . . .

Hostas are also doing well under hemlock trees; no surface roots. I thought I would extend the hosta bed under the hemlocks to where there are red maple and white ash trees. Unfortunately this area is loaded with roots. In another thread several posters recommended modified 5 gal. buckets and "spin out bags" to seperate the hosta from tree roots. Since 5 gal buckets for my purpose were too small and I couldn't find out anything about spin out bags I used landscape fabric. After digging out and clearing large hole of tree roots I lined the hole with LF, secured with nails, filled with top soil, compost etc. and planted the hostas. Hopefully this will keep out the tree roots.

I have three 60 year old Austrian Pines (pinus nigra) and Hostas, lamium, epimedium, sweet woodruff, daylilies and other things do well under them.

tj