New Miniature and Small Hostas for 2014, Part 2
Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.
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Clockwise from upper left: flowers of ‘Lemon Frost’, ‘Neutrino’, ‘Chartreuse Wiggles’, ‘Thumbelina’, and ‘Feather Boa’.
My last post called New Miniature and Small Hostas for 2014 highlighted four new additions to our extensive offerings of miniature hostas. In that post I talked about ‘Alakazaam’, ‘Baby Booties’, ‘Cherish’, and ‘Kiwi Golden Thimble’. To see the photos and descriptions, click here. This post will add five more profiles of cute little hostas that you will want to add to your containers and gardens.
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‘Feather Boa’ is extremely useful because it grows rapidly to form a dense groundcover of bright gold leaves. It is 11″ tall by 27″ wide, and its leaves are 3 3/4″ long by 2″ wide. The narrow gold foliage with very wavy margins is topped by attractive purple flowers in July.
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‘Thumbelina’ departs from the usual color scheme to give us a very cute bright green and gold mini with wavy, heart-shaped leaves and a wide yellow margin . It is 10″ tall by 24″ wide, and its leaves are 4″ long by 3″ wide. It has medium purple flowers in July and forms a small, dense rounded mound, great specimen!
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‘Chartreuse Wiggles has glossy, bright gold, very narrow and heavily rippled leaves that really stand out in the garden. It is 10″ high by 25″ wide, and its leaves are 5 1/2″ long by 1″ wide. Pale purple flowers appear in August. It forms a low dense mound, making an excellent specimen, edger, or groundcover.
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‘Neutrino’ is another mini hosta that really stands out. The bright green, pointy leaves have a wide white margin that streaks into the center. It forms a 5″ tall by 16″ wide neat but dense mound. Its leaves are 2 3/4″ long by 1 3/4″ wide topped by medium purple flowers in July. It is a tiny plant, a seedling of H. venusta.
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‘Lemon Frost’ features a very unusual color combination of light chartreuse leaves with a pure white margin. It is 10″ tall by 24″ wide, and its leaves are 3 1/2″ long by 1 1/2″ wide. The gorgeous, dark purple striped flowers appear in July (next photo). It is very fast growing and useful as a variegated ground cover or edging plant.
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The buds of ‘Lemon Frost’ are a desirable dark purple, and the flowers are striped—a hosta I would grow for its flowers!
There may be a third post in this series with a few more new additions. Meanwhile, if you would like to read more about little hostas, click on any of the following links:
New Miniature and Small Hostas for 2014, Part 1
2013 New Miniature and Small Hostas
Hostas Containers and Companions
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Carolyn
Nursery Happenings: The 2015 Miniature Hosta Availability for mail order and pick up at the nursery is here. You can sign up to receive emails by sending your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net.
Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.
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CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS 
May 27, 2014 at 8:37 pm
Lemon Frost does have nice flowers. I usually cut off hosta flowers, but would let these bloom on.
May 28, 2014 at 6:19 am
Donna, I agree. A lot of the minis have cute little proportional flowers which is another reason I like them. Carolyn
May 28, 2014 at 8:26 pm
Nice photographs! I love hostas and have been growing them for longer than I can remember, check out my recent post on my hostas!
Michael
May 28, 2014 at 9:22 pm
Michael, I will be visiting your blog shortly. Carolyn
July 8, 2014 at 1:19 pm
I just posted today that I have Lemon Lime hosta for trade if anyone is interested! 🙂
May 29, 2014 at 7:39 am
Those hosta pictures are gorgeous. We are going to have to add more variety to our garden.
May 29, 2014 at 1:11 pm
Tom, Glad you enjoyed them. The minis are fun. Carolyn
May 30, 2014 at 1:03 pm
Always love your Hostas Carolyn, I did bring quite a number from our Aberdeen garden and the bonus is, very few slugs here. Your Hosta that caught my eye is the ‘Chartreuse Wiggles, how very unusual. The flowers on Lemon Frost look a real treat. Seems to me that because the foliage of Hostas are so very special, the powers that be, tell us we should have no time for the blooms,whilst at the same time, sing the praises of blooms on other flowering perennials which are much less significant.
May 30, 2014 at 6:36 pm
Alistair, England is known for slugs so you are very lucky. Yes, it is important to ignore the powers that be. Some hostas have gorgeous flowers and should be grown for that reason. H. plantaginea, H. tokudama, all the Mouse Ears, and Baby Bunting and its progeny come to mind. As you know, gardeners really need to be wary of all those “gardening rules”. Often the really glorious result is in the breaking of them. Carolyn
June 2, 2014 at 3:40 am
Found the most amazing garden nursery very near to us called Grasslands (best I have ever seen) for the first time I have seen Blue mouse ears!
June 2, 2014 at 6:16 am
Alistair, How exciting! And didn’t you think it was cute. It gets much better as it matures. Carolyn
June 1, 2014 at 2:05 pm
Oh my that lemon Frost is a keeper especially those flowers
June 1, 2014 at 5:07 pm
Donna, Yes, it really is quite unusual and beautiful. Carolyn
June 8, 2014 at 7:59 pm
Love the Lemon Frost; the flowers are a great bonus! And I adore Chartreuse Wiggles. Thanks for the great information. These are two more to add to my list. I can always count on you for plant enticements to inflame my horticultural lust.
June 9, 2014 at 6:48 am
Deb, I just planted Lemon Frost in my own garden yesterday. It is in full bloom right now and looks beautiful. Carolyn