Blue Angel Hosta

A big beauty, Blue Angel makes a dramatic 4-foot centerpiece plant with wide, deeply-veined leaves.

Hostas are shade lovers grown mostly for their beautiful foliage, and they're probably the very best plants for groundcover under trees in most parts of the U.S. Its simple: they're delighted to grow in shady spots where your grass will not. (They are super hardy in cold areas, but are somewhat difficult as far south as the Gulf Coast.)

Any gardener who lives in the huge area where Hostas are popular knows them. Now with over 1000 named cultivars, there are Hosta collectors everywhere. Just choose your favorites from the small, medium, and large sizes, and an endless choice of leaf designs. The plants, members of the lily family, are native to Korea, China and Japan, and gardeners there have used them for centuries for landscaping. The craze for Hostas is more recent in the U.S. And why not? They offer an endless variety of their wonderful fountain mound shape of handsome foliage--in lush shades of green, bluish-green, yellowish green, and all sorts of variegated types. Nothing is easier to grow; in fact, most gardeners simply ignore them, and they form their beautiful round shapes all by themselves, year after year.