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!

I've gotten a lot of great advice...thank you. I'm still struggling with the shape of the bed. Symmetrical I can do, but curves throw me off a bit because the informality. I do feel it necessary to adjoin it one way or another with my front hedge of boxwood, but I don't know that I necessarily want another rectangular planting bed around the tree. Then I feel like I'd be inclined to replicate that on the other side of my lawn. I also don't want to do a complete circle..I think of crop circles..and I don't want the tree out in limbo in my landscaping. It wouldn't work. So, I'm leaning towards a curved planting bed that adjoins my row of hosta along my front hedge of boxwood. As you are facing my house, in this order - A large maple tree on the city way on the left hand side of the house, city sidewalk, bed of pachysandra at base of retaining wall on each side of my straight centered walkway that runs to my front door, hedge of boxwood at top of retaining wall, straight row hostas behind my boxwood hedge, rectangular lawn, and another row of same hostas in front of my foundation plantings. ....And then a tree in there somewhere on the right hand side of my lawn. I like order, so this bed completely throws me off. LOL To keep a sense of formality, someone suggested planting the hostas in drifts...a layer affect of the same color of hosta, but different sizes with the largest towards the center, and that appeals to me since there's an order to it. However, since the planting bed will be assymetrical, I am struggling with placement since there won't be equal distances from one end to the other, and there is no real front or back...I have to visualize from different angles..neighbors driveway, facing my house, etc.,...I will have to play around with it, just having difficulty visualizing it. ..And I agree wholeheartedly, a gardeners work is never finished. I'm changing things around every year, but I enjoy every minute of it.

was it fragrant??? .. smell everything that blooms in august .... most of us get a vast majority of our plants.. mail order ... we have quite a few favored vendors ... they are hosta SELLERS... not breeders ... that word means something else .. welcome to the forum.. you will soon be on your hundredth ... lol ... i dont understand your title... why is this one unpopular???? .. perhaps you mean little known ...??? see link to hosta library.. maybe you can find the pix you are looking for ... go figure.. its not in the library.. whats that all about.. if anyone has a pic.. send it to bob .. link is now for google .... ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

I've been meaning to ask if all the rocks were part of the landscape or did you have to buy them? If they were free I'll be up with Don R's renforced trailer and help you move some of your extras to my house! lol I'm finally at the end of all your posts and have enjoyed everyone!!!!! Just a suggestion to save time, mine in perticular, lol,you could put more than one picture in each post next time you do it. So what if we don't leave on time on Sat. I'll just tell my Hubby it was all hostahillbilly's fault (sure I will) I've enjoyed every minute spent in looking at your extensive garden and all your wonderful hostas. Connie