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: ‘Lemon Frost’, ‘Alakazaam’, ‘Baby Booties’, ‘Neutrino’, ‘Kiwi Golden Thimble’, ‘Curly Fries’, ‘Thumbelina’, and ‘Cherish’.
My last post called New Mice for 2014 profiled the new additions to the adorable Mouse Ears Series of miniature hostas. In that post I talked about ‘Sunny Mouse Ears’, ‘Mouse Cheese’, ‘Ruffled Mouse Ears’, and ‘Church Mouse’. To see the photos and descriptions, click here. I extolled the virtues of their round, rubbery slug-repelling leaves in beautiful colors, their symmetrical habit, and their lovely proportional flowers.
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‘Alakazaam’ planted in the knot hole of a tree.
I have added a lot of new miniature and small hostas that are not mice to my offerings, and I want to profile a few of them here. But first I would like to answer the question what is a miniature hosta? The American Hosta Society defines miniature hostas by their leaf size. The leaf blade area, length x width, can be no greater than 6 square inches. Clump spread is irrelevant. Therefore, some of the hostas listed below are not technically “miniature”, but they are all little!
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‘Alakazaam’s’ unusual spiky habit makes it stand out from the crowd no matter where you place it. It forms a clump 5″ tall by 10″ wide, and its leaves are 6 1/2″ long and 3/4″ wide. They are bright green with gold ruffled margins changing to creamy white.
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‘Baby Booties’ departs from the usual gold and blue color scheme to give us a very cute green and white mini with oval leaves and a wide creamy white margin . It forms a 5″ tall by 19″ wide compact mound, and its oval leaves are 2 3/4″ long by 1 3/8″ wide.
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‘Cherish’ is an adorable tiny hosta, “child” of the wonderful ‘Baby Bunting’, with heart-shaped creamy yellow leaves and a wide blue margin streaking into the center. It has pixie-like, tiny flowers that are coming into bloom right now. It is 8″ tall by 12″ wide, and its leaves are 2 1/2 ” long by 1 1/2″ wide. It needs more sun due to its extensive variegation.
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‘Kiwi Golden Thimble’ is my most popular new mini hosta. Its unusual gold color and narrow, cupped leaves really stand out. Plus it rapidly produces an adorable mound of golden foliage. It is 5″ tall by 18″ wide, and its leaves are 2 3/4″ long by 1 1/4″ wide.
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Look for another post on four more new additions. If you would like to read more about little hostas, click on any of the following links:
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.
If you are within visiting distance and would like to receive catalogues and information about customer events, please send your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.
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CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS 