- Type: host
- Flowering Period: July, August
- Height: 15-60cm
- Color: White, Lilac
- Perennial
- Winters
- Shady
- Loving
Plants that amaze with amazing beauty and are able to remain attractive throughout the season are welcome guests in suburban areas. One of such representatives of the plant world is the host, which can rightfully be considered the "princess" of any flower bed. The picky and unusually beautiful host plant in landscape design is very popular. In the flower garden, on a rocky hill or near a reservoir, the plant never ceases to delight with the endless variety of varieties and amazing colors.
Marvelous plants with large leaves, painted in all kinds of shades of green, often occupy one of the central places in flower arrangements. Landscaping with hosts is particularly elegant and sophisticated: elegant floral arrangements, complemented by decorative leafy hosts, look simply amazing.
Hosts forming airy green "pillows", visually softening the transitions between the beautifully flowering elements of the flower garden, can bring harmony to the composition
The main advantage of these plants beloved by many gardeners is the ability to grow in any conditions. The host perfectly adjoins many plantings, which is an important factor in the arrangement of landscape design. Absolutely unpretentious plant calmly tolerates as a small partial shade, and so dense shading. But still, the plant feels most comfortable in slightly shaded areas, hidden from direct sunlight and strong gusts of wind.
In tandem, you can pick up other shade-like plants for it: //diz-cafe.com/ozelenenie/tenelubivye-mnogoletniki-dlya-sada.html
When choosing a place for hosting, many gardeners use a little trick. By acquiring two copies of the plant initially, they plant them in different places on the site, and a year after planting, according to the appearance of the plants, the saturation of the shades, and the amount of accumulated green mass, they determine the most suitable place for the host.
“Queen of the Shadow” is very popular among gardeners also because it is not only unpretentious care, but also longevity. Long-livers perennials are able to maintain decorativeness for 20-25 years. Hosts are also very popular with arrangers: plant leaves are used to create floral arrangements and make bouquets.
Types and variety of host
Depending on the height of the plants, deciduous hosts can act as gardening components for a wide variety of landscape design elements:
- Groundcover, whose height does not exceed 20 cmGreat for rockeries, rocky slopes and partial shady corners of the garden.
- Low grades up to 30 cm high will serve as elements of container gardening. They are perfect for decorating borders and mixborders.
- Samples 30-45 cm high will act as a background of floral compositions of natural landscape designs. They look great as solid carpets, serving as a backdrop for medium-sized garden flowers: gladioli, lilies, delphiniums.
- Plants 45-60 cm tall will be a worthy setting for ponds and garden paths. Planted next to each other, they create an elegant beautiful background for flowering plantings.
- The tallest samples, the height of which exceeds 60-80 cm, most effectively look as single landings in territories with large areas.
Depending on the plant variety, the leaves may have a round, heart-shaped or narrow shape. The texture of the leaves can also be completely diverse: smooth and corrugated, crumpled and wrinkled, shiny and matte, with a metallic tint and wax coating.
Hosts, the variety of which numbers about 50 species, are famous for their unusually beautiful foliage and the ability to maintain decorativeness not only during the flowering period, but throughout the season
A plant capable of forming dense “caps” of foliage is often used as carpet plantings, through whose dense foliage weeds simply cannot break through.
Hosta’s main decoration is basal foliage of various textures and colors, which grows during the season into spherical openwork "pillows" with a diameter of about a meter
During flowering, hosta is decorated with white, pinkish or lilac bell-shaped flowers. Towering on high peduncles over green foliage, they create an amazing picturesque picture
In addition to the traditional green colors of foliage, the palette of shades of plants is also very diverse, starting with pale yellow and cream and ending with rich green and blue leaves that can create an incredibly beautiful background. In landscape design, plant varieties are most often used, forming bushes with a height of 40 to 100 cm, decorated with leaves 6 to 35 cm long.
What varieties are considered decorative?
Lush "pillows", as if woven from gray, blue and golden leaves, can bring unusual colors to the garden's palette.
Perhaps the most common variety that has long taken root in suburban areas is the plantain host. The plant, decorated with large light green leaves, is able to form "pillows" 60-80 cm high
Breeders do not cease to amaze, creating new varieties that amaze with the contrast of shades and texture of foliage. Two and even three-color hosts are most decorative.
'Wirlwind' with white leaves bordered by an apple-green outline is a vivid representative of three-color varieties of perennial beauties
No less spectacular is the 'Striptease' variety, decorated with a graceful whitish strip that breaks through the center of the sheet through a rich wide dark green border
One of the latest trends in host selection is the creation of varieties with a wavy edge of the leaf blade.
Varieties of 'Medusa', adorned with a curtain of green-yellow foliage and 'Hadspen Heron' with bright green fan-shaped leaves, have a special charm
A feature of varietal plants is a slow mass buildup. Such hosts gain sufficient decorativeness only for 4-5 years, and only 8-10 years old are able to fully display beauty. Gradually, from year to year, forming ever larger leaves that acquire the color and shape characteristic of the variety, small nondescript shrubs turn into real "flower garden queens".
Create a contrast of compositions and forms
To create a bright contrast flower garden, the elements of which, harmoniously complementing each other, form an integral pictorial picture, a number of points should be taken into account.
Lush host bushes with monophonic leaves in landscape design play a more background role. They go well with garden plants: astilbe, peonies, dicentres, ferns.
In their appearance, the flowers of the diacenter resemble small hearts. Caring for this plant comes down to a few rules: //diz-cafe.com/rastenija/posadka-vyrashhivanie-uxod-za-dicentroy.html
The decorative role of a single planting is given more to large varieties and samples having two or three-color leaves. Such variegated bushes resemble large flowerpots placed in the corners of the garden, filled with huge bouquets.
Plants with small foliage will become successful partners for the host: purple periwinkle, styloid phlox, blue forget-me-nots, poppy and rhododendron
Decorative varieties of conifers can effectively emphasize the sprawling and beauty of the hosts.
Vivid contrasts of the composition can be obtained by planting grassy plants with a different shade of leaves near the host, for example: a heicher with purple foliage or a goryanka with burgundy leaves
Material about landing and caring for geyhera can also be useful: //diz-cafe.com/ozelenenie/geyhera.html
The vertical accent of the plant composition is given by: phlox, purchased and daylilies. Grain: Miscanthus and reedweed help to complete the composition.
Proper care of such a plant
To create a beautiful and durable garden design, you should take into account the peculiarities of the decorative-leafed plant cycle. When choosing plants, one should focus not only on the illuminance of the site, but also on the composition, level of moisture and acidity of the soil.
For growing a host, areas shaded in the afternoon with neutral slightly acidic soils are best suited. It is important to know that hosts do not like stagnation of water, which negatively affects their root system.
An ideal option for planting a plant is cultivated, fertile and well-drained soil, in which there are many earthworms and microorganisms that saturate it with oxygen
As for illumination, not all varieties prefer shaded areas. Hosts with leaves of blue and blue shades prefer to grow in the shade. And in well-lit areas, two and three-color varieties with white, yellow and golden leaves show the greatest decorativeness.
Sun-loving host varieties: Sum and Substance with heart-shaped leaves, Zounds with bright yellow foliage and Great Expectations with cream-colored leaves framed by bluish lace
Hosts are resistant to frost and therefore do not require additional shelter in the winter. Having planted the plant in a permanent place in spring or in the first half of autumn, it is sufficient to periodically feed it with organic fertilizers in the future. A host can grow in one place for more than 10 years.
