ok .. YOU WIN ....

i cant say i have ever seen.. hosta AND PALMS...

congrats

ken

Like a tropical Hosta Paradise. Love these pics. Banana Trees, Palms and Colocasia as companion plants. Olive Bailey Langdon would be proud.

Steve

Ken's hosta spend the winter browsing travel brochures for Moc's place...

Looks great! :)

Very nice job! Looks great. And lots of room for everything to grow.

Beautiful! I love the tropical look and then you added the hosta too. Awesome.

plantbug

Thank you Ken and Steve et al! Actually hosta fit in nicely with the "modern tropical look." I have a book with a frontispiece of subtropical plants such as hakone grass, japanese maple, and liriope, maybe that yellow creeping jenny or solomon seal, and heuchera, done by landscape architects in California. Featured prominently in the landscape are some very large hosta......

Anyway, here is the picture.

None of the hosta were identified. Do you think you might take a shot at the names? They fit in with the lush tropical look perfectly. They were illustrating that temperate zone plants can work with a tropicalesque landscape.

My bed has a substrate of 5 or 6 inches of mini bark nuggets pine of course. Then the depth of the two landscape timbers is cow manure and crushed crab shell. I mounded the spots with the hosta like hills of squash to further raise them above the wetness of the soil. I must allow as much drainage as possible. We have wet summers and generally wet winters too--must always be vigilant for the hosta welfare, even walking the garden with my umbrella while it rains, looking for water standing in the pots. I took the pictures of the bed in the rain, in fact.

I thank you for looking, and for your words of encouragement.

Here is a link that might be useful: Modern Tropical Garden Design--Wijaya

That is wonderful and truly unique. It will be exciting to see this garden mature but it also looks great now. Think of most of us in the north lugging Elephant Ears inside in winter. I've already killed a couple of those feathery palm trees (center front of the first picture).

I love what you have done. It is so nice to see the tropicals together with hosta. It just couldn't be better. You've been working hard to create a magical garden. I can see that!

Very beautiful and I just love the tropical look too. It looks like a tropical vacation spot... anywhere to park out MH this winter lol You did good

Looks great! What's that in the last pic in front of the big banana, and between the elephant ears and the little banana?

bkl

Terrific job!
I bet it feels good to get 'em in the ground with "Nature's umbrellas" for shade ;-)

Deb

Interesting to see palms and hostas! Hope they grow for you,but I still say,the sub tropics should be for Bougainvillea,and Crotons. When I lived in Florida,hosta was not even a spoken word! Good luck! Phil

Such kind remarks, and from informed people too. Indeed, it is a labor of love. It is a paradise to me.

I was sitting there the other day in the Back40 potted garden, having spread new mulch and placed the sand dollar stepping stones. I was filled with contentment and peace of mind.

And I thought.....paradise. Yes, when God created man, He placed him in a garden. Can heaven be any different than this?

smiling here...

and you've got one Minnesota "snowbird" in the group... Most hosta folks know Shady Oaks as a pioneering powerhouse in hosta tissue culturing, especially with the work of Hans Hansen (until he jumped ship and went to Walters in 2009).

Being old hosta folks from Minnesota, we remember Shady Oaks before... a small mailorder nursery founded and run by Clayton and Millie Oslund. Their son Gordy built the business up, but if you visited in the 1990s you could still go to the old farmhouse on the edge of town with the big hosta gardens in the back under shading oaks...

Hans named this one for Millie...

Phil, I know what you mean about hosta not appearing in Florida gardens. I think ILOVETOGROW is the only hosta gardener in Florida....although they are commercially growing them in that state.

I have two bougainvillea in pots, one large one small. LOTS of other things such as mandevilla or allemanda. They seem to play nicely together.

Having mentioned the other day about the diseases of high humidity and hot temperatures, and no killing freezes to take disease back to zero each winter, it will be an interesting mix. I think that with the climate change, hosta can adapt to growing in a warmer world. They are a diverse group of species which solve their problems in individual ways. I see no reason why they cannot adapt to growing here. They already know how to go heat dormant. Their reproduction is not simply seeds, it includes rhizomes. It experiments with color change to tolerate shade or hot exposures.

McTavish, my alocasia turned to mush when we had our super cold winter 3 years ago now. Our cold lasted for 2 weeks, unheard of for us. I thought it was a goner. The remains of the elephant ear looked like a cow patty. But, what happened is, next spring, from beneath that pile of decaying plant tuber, came the new plant. Sort of like a phoenix rising from its own dead body. So I stopped worrying about protecting it. I guess it's like any mother sacrificing to keep the baby alive. Pretty effective plan.

Hostas under palms? How else should they be growing? Mocc looks real great. I know it was hard work made even harder with rain and more rain. Very nice.

I do have to agree with you that I am the only hosta grower in Jax. Hos Ters, 2 words, is what they are called here. Makes me giggle.

Idiothe, we posted same time I think.

I really like Millie's Memoirs, and find the history of it interesting. I'm a history fan, including the history of plant exploration and hybridizing. Genealogy in a way. Hearing your tales of the hosta people in years gone by is always interesting. Thanks.

Here is a closer shot of Millie's Memoirs in July.

Hey, Deb, I'd have overlooked your post if GWeb had not notified me with the email.....

I had to laugh....you know I use umbrellas for shade, and calling my palms "nature's umbrellas" is really true. Long handles and then a sheltering topknot. I like it! No root competition either.

BKay, the plants (there are two in this bed) are called cassia. They make upright clusters of bright yellow pea shaped blooms, rather like candelabra. You can grow them I'm sure. The leaves fold together at the midvein when it gets too hot, I think preserving moisture? But I like the lacy layered look of the small leaves.

I'd give you a link, but there are so many choices, and so just google "cassia plant" and take your pick. It was sold by Lowes. USDA Plant guide has it growing in Florida, and PR and Virgin Islands. But that may be the tree. The ones like mine I saw growing on the banks of Bayou LaFourche in south Louisiana, about the size of a nice azalea, with the candles sticking up all over it. Really lovely in bloom, and the leaves look unique too. It is a legume, I read. So pea shaped blooms is more applicable than I realized. :)

Fay, you make it this far, you can have a parking spot in our circular driveway!

However, you might enjoy more the place now set up on the river, with some nice features for paved parking pads and power etc, just one block over. I think it is called Shady Acres. It is on Old Military Road, zip code 36605.

Come on down! :)

S U B L I M E !!! Mocc, S U B L I M E !!!

Jo, thank you, sweets. My DH and I sat at the little bistro table the other night and had our champagne to better appreciate the ambiance. He is from New England, and says he has never seen such a garden, just shakes his head in wonder. Sublime is a good word, and I thank you for looking.

Myrle, the feathery palm you mean is the sago palm. I have two of them. If I remember correctly, they do not like to be moved, so I kept mine in a container (yeah, you know me) until I decided to make the driveway bed a couple of years ago. Those palms have separate female and male plants, no mistaking which you have when they begin to mature. If I get some seed, I'll send them to you. I won't forget.

That's a lovely garden, like your own little paradise. Love the Back40 too!

Wendy

Life is good, Mocc. YOU and your DH know how to live it!
Cheers...I'm going out...will have a drink of something cool and "tropical" to commemorate your latest achievement. I'll ask for a decorative "umbrella"!
:-)

>>Jo says...... I'll ask for a decorative "umbrella"! Jo, that is hilarious. I'd never thought about it.....
Come to think of it, when we married on July 15 in 2006, I gave Chinese paper umbrellas to all the ladies at the reception. It must be an unrecognized theme in my world.

Now I see it....with a nice tall glass of Mimosa ornamented with a not-so-tiny umbrella!

A passing thought:
If ever I grow my own gold hosta, I think it should be named Yella Umbrellas. There's already a Blue Umbrellas.

Nice job, Mocc!!!! I like the way you have enough other things in there so that it will still look good after the hostas go dormant. It will be VERY interesting to see how they do over the next few years...

-Babka

Well, lookee what you did, Mocc! I LOVE it!!! I hope they all grow well, and these beds are a rousing success, season after season.

Ya damn rogue! Ha Ha Ha Great job

Thoroughly Impressed,
Don B.

Congratulations! You can feel very proud of your work. Love what you have done.

so many new ideas, so little time.

Great job!

You can come help scape my yard any time.

Now, add a couple of orchids ... to the palm trees ...

Super.

dave

Dave, I don't have regular orchids, but I have the hardy terrestrial orchids which are bletillas, and also some rather large nun's orchids. I might have a friend who has native orchids give me one for the space beneath the palms or the camellias.

Your advice is well received. Thanks.

The bed is lovely. Everything looks great together. Your back looks wonderful also.
Cher

Moc, you have done a terrific job. You have taken the lemons of hosta growing, high heat and no winter dormancy, and very smartly turned them into a delicious lemonade of palms and hosta.

Great job!

Jon

Thanks for sharing your garden with us Moc. Very beautiful.
Beverly

What a beautiful garden! I so miss the subtropics. My yard in New Orleans had 10 feet of water for three weeks after Katrina. The cypress and palm trees survived, but the only thing that came back were the elephant ears.

Ah, ZKathy, I am so sorry for the pain caused by that storm. We lost our house (moved in 2 months before) on the river, a lot of the plants there died, did not seem to like that salt water.
Our water did not stand long, just went back out, fortunately, but family members in the NOLA area suffered a long time too.

Hope you enjoy gardening where you are now. Every spot seems to have its own brand of disaster waiting to happen. Familiar devils are easier to deal with, in my experience.

Oh, I like this.. .a lot!