My name is Henk Hooijer and I live in Heerhugowaard in the Netherlands.

I work as an operator on a production-platform on the North Sea.

My hobbies are computing, gardening, genealogy,etc.

In gardening Hosta's are my favorit garden plants.

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I bought this plant a few years ago and soon color and leafscape fascinated me. Then I bought more plants and start searching for more information. The first book I found in the book-shop was "Hosta and Ferns" of Wim Oudshoorn. It was written in Dutch. In the book I found the address of "The Dutch Hosta Society" and decided to be a member. Through the Society you received on regular base information about Hosta's. The next step, in the meantime I get an internet-connection, was searching the net about Hosta information. Well, I found many sites and specialty the e-mail discussion group Hosta-Open. This is a group of Hosta lovers who will share their experience with you. You can ask everything about Hosta's and sure there is an answer. They have also a pixlist, that is a list of people who will share pictures of hosta's sending by e-mail. Through this way you will learn a lot about these plants. Are you interested joining us through the link on this info-page. Due I have a small garden I will collect everything about these plants and puts it in a database, with now contain more than 3200 names and its still growing.

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The Hosta is a plant who loves shade and half-shade and soil with enough moisture. It's a rather easy plant with will grow every where if you give it the basics. There are plants in lots of colors and shapes. Especially in the U.S they do a lot of research to get better plants. They are looking for plants with better and more stable colors and also more resistance against disease and slugs. The main enemies in Holland are slugs. They like Hosta's with soft and weak leaf. To protect your garden against these animals, you must keep your garden clean, so it will be hard for them to hide for the natural enemies like birds and hedgehogs. If you have to watering your garden do it in the early morning, so the soil is dry during the night, otherwise slugs like you and your Hosta's.

Like said there are many Hosta's. Some are very small (5 cm high) and others very big (more than 100 cm high). The color of the leaf is green, blue-green, yellow, white and combinations of them and different patterns. Leaf-thickness varies from thin to very thick. In general can said, one color leaf tolerate more sun than two-color leaf. Sometimes you hear that gardens of Hosta lovers are boring due to many plants together. I do not agree with this and for those who not believe a Hosta garden will be beautiful follow this link. Photo's.

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Descriptions and photo's of Hosta's I have.

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See the info-page

There are many Hosta Societies's in the world; the most important is the AHS. This is the American Hosta Society, which does a lot of work in registration and promoting Hosta's. In Holland you have the "De Nederlandse Hosta Vereniging". Membership cost F30.00 a year and you receive twice a year "Het Hosta blad" and besides that newsletters about activities etc. For addresses or information mail me. See also the page with links to the homepages of these Societies.

New is the Hosta Photo Library where Hosta lovers can send there photo's and easily compare the different cultivars. That side will be daily updated.

New also is the Hosta Sports Library. The goal of this side is give information about the relationship between cultivars. For the URL's see the info-page.

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Through Internet is much information available about these plants and what the possibilities are. For links see the info-page or type in a search-engine Hosta or Hosta's or Funkia as search argument. You will get a list of sites with nurseries and home-pages of other hosta lovers. In Holland they are also special nurseries for hostas. 

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Hosta pictures

Hosta flowers

Hosta pictures from my garden.

Hosta changing and strange effects.

Other

Link to Hostaworld where I will place pictures and links to Hostagardens.

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