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!

You did fine--and I'm enjoying the pictures tremendously. I just spent the past week mulling over some new (for me) hosta--my semi-shady/high shade area got destroyed (along with most of my hosta) when they took down the giant sycamore some years ago, but now my river birch replacements are giving enough shade that I can once again consider growing hosta. You have shown pictures of a number of the ones I have been closely considering. So helpful to me--as well as being such lovely shots of them. Thanks for all your time and energy here--and your fine photography! Kate

That's great about HostaLib. Your lists will be a great asset there! About Papou's comment "Why dont you publish an unexpensive loose-leaf 3-ring binder style document.", I just wanted to mention that one year, when I wanted to make calanders for Christmas presants, I bought a GBC brand "CombBind C50" from one of the office supply stores (Staples, Office Depot, Office Max - one of those). It cuts the holes and puts a plastic ring type binder in (the sort you see in recipe books that various organizations sell for fund raisers). It was a little pricy, maybe $50 - $60 plus supplies, but it's easy to use and makes a nice booklet. I'm glad I bought it and plan to use it for other things besides calanders. If you (or your wife) are into any kinds of crafts it might be something you'd like to look into. Of course, doing it that way, you'd have to make the booklets yourself. Just a thought.

Hi Dolly, Welcome to the Forum and congratulations on your home purchase! I'm a Brooklyn limestone owner and have a very, very good sense of what you are going through. Unfortunately, I'm on my way out the door and can't tarry at this site right now but here are a few quick words of advice: 1. Please do join us at the NYC metro area get together of the GW TKO folks! We are meeting this coming Saturday, 7/12, at 12:30, @ the Blue Water Grill in Union Square. If you come, you will meet several of us who are in various stages of our renos and have lots of advice and tips to share with you. Plus, we just want to meet and mingle with as many of our great GW family as we can! For more details and to RSVP, see the link below. 2. I currently have Lidingo white cabs in my kitchen. Although I am struggling over whether they are staying or getting replaced with custom cabs, I think they are fabulous -- especially for the price. And their simple, raised panel design works quite well with my old house. If space, budget and time are challenges for you, I doubt seriously you could do much better than Ikea. Ikea rocks! 3. Do not worry about closing on your apartment in one month and the state of your kitchen! Best to get used to the idea that no matter what your timeframe is, your reno is unlikely to go exactly as planned. Although, given where you work, I'm sure you already know this! :) Maybe, at this stage, you might want to concentrate more on the design logistics and stocking of your temporary kitchen and just get used to the concept of delay and changes. And, of course, even in the midst of shouts and tears, remember to have fun! More later! Here is a link that might be useful: NYC GW Get Together, Saturday 7/12