Thank you all. I'm considering all of your suggestions. Steve, I'm in Dover, Delaware. As for water, it has been dry here and I watered this area shown in the photo for about 2 hours yesterday with an occilating sprinkler. And I'm pretty alert to the water requirements. So I think I'm OK with the water situatiion. Fertilizer may be the problem. Tell me what you think about alfalfa pellets. I buy these in the 50 lb sacks at the animal feed store and use them on my roses and daylilies. I'm talking about horse food here. Do you think these would be good on the shade garden, too? Perhaps a combination of Plant Tone and alfalfa pellets. Paul in Minnesota, thank you for posting your pics. The second photo of your golden tiara with the scapes just emerging is a beautiful plant. I would be delighted with such a plant in midseason. However, my Golden Tiara plants look sickly by midseason, and are no longer attractive, even though the June Hosta right nearby look fabulous. (June and Sagae are my absolute favorites - they put a smile on my face every time.) So, perhaps is it a heat problem with the Golden Tiaras? Well, no matter, i've already decided. Alfalfa pellets and Plant Tone are going on the shade garden. thank you all again. I will post more pics of this spot in my yard a little later in the season. Christine

No, it would not have been grown by planting seed. Most likely, a wholesaler would have produced it by a process known as "tissue culture" in which a small portion of the plant was grown under lights in a test tube. Then the Grand Tiara hosta "sported" with an all-gold shoot known as 'Amber Tiara'. "Sporting" can occur in several different ways. In his book titled The Hosta Handbook, Mark Zilis offers the following comment: The most common type of mutation ("sporting") occurs when the chlorophyll changes or mutates into another form. The net result is a "sport" (the resulting, mutated plant) with foliage colors different from the original or "mother" plant. (The Hosta Handbook, page 44)

Actually, the leaves of Grand Tiara are only slightly thicker than its diploid parent, Golden Tiara. The leaf thickness of the majority of hostas is .0090 to .0110 inches, when measured between the veins. Golden Tiara leaves measure .0065 to .0070 inches thick, while Grand Tiara leaves are .0070 to .0080 inches thick. So the leaves of Grand Tiara, while slightly thicker than Golden Tiara, are still thinner than the average hosta.

Love seeing these photos of girls playing soccer. Beautiful, confident girls! Oldest DGD played through high school on school and club teams. She didn’t want to play in college but she has great lifelong friends and we all have great memories of those days.