Written and Photographed by Mike Penprase
Published Srpingfield News-Leader, Outdoors, April 21, 2011

The News-Leader article link: With excellent photographs, including those taken in Close Memorial Park's Hosta Garden.

Tom Lakowske, Friends of the Garden board member and president of the Greater Ozarks Hosta Society has worked with the two group's volunteers to greatly improve the Hosta Garden this year. Come out and see it for yourself, 2400 S. Scenic, Springfield.

On a springtime morning when gardeners celebrate sprouting plants, J.J. Averett picked up a sharp kitchen knife and got a determined look in her eye. Averett's victim had done nothing wrong, and Averett wasn't doing anything wrong when she began hacking.

Hostas don't mind a bit when you chop them up, Greene County Extension Master Gardener Tom Lakowske said as Averett and a group of fellow students practiced chopping up a big hosta to make a lot of little hostas. "It's funny," Lakowske said before the class in the Springfield-Greene County Botanical Center. "A lot of people are nervous about digging up a plant, dividing it into pieces and planting it again."

But dividing hostas is a time-honored way to build a big shade garden, said Lakowske, who is also president of the Greater Ozarks Hosta Society. It's usually no problem to get four hostas out of a good-sized plant, and he's seen big plants yield as many as 50 new plants, Lakowske said.

Like other students in Lakowske's class, Averett is a master gardener out to learn more about hostas. Her yard has a lot of shade, so she likes shade-tolerant hostas, Averett said before dividing a Gold Standard, one of the long-time favorites of hosta enthusiasts. Named for Austrian botanist Nicholas Thomas Host, the plants prized for their leaves originated in northeast Asia, particularly Japan.

There are so many varieties that it's no problem finding hostas with tiny or giant leaves, dark green leaves that verge into blue or even bright yellow leaves. "I don't plant them for the bloom; I plant them for the leaf," Lakowske said.

Other students were at the class to get tips so they could create new gardens. That's what she's planning to do at the Greene Hills Country Club at Willard, Ginny Cox said. "They're so hardy; that's another reason I love them," Cox said.

The plant that's been determined to be the No. 1 perennial plant in plant popularity polls doesn't require much care, Lakowske said. Hostas are "creep, sleep and leap" plants, he said. That's because hostas need three years of growth to really take off, he said. The first year is for the roots to grow; the second year is for the plant to get bigger. "The next year, stand back," Lakowske said.