Friday Tour Garden Information
Friday tour garden information and directions will be available at the registration desk.
Gardens are open from 8:15 am to 1:30 pm
Elizabeth Veldey’s Garden
Tom and I have a half-acre lot in Lewis Center, Ohio, north of Columbus. In 1994, we walked down what would become our street in ankle-deep mud, climbing over large tree trunks, to find our perfect, wooded, walk-out lot on Foxcroft Drive.
My former house in Skokie, Illinois had a small full-sun garden. When we moved to the Foxcroft house, I didn’t know what I was going to plant in all that shade. I started studying shade gardening and was inspired by the Wayside Garden catalogue’s “Emerald Isle”. It was a package of hostas of various kinds that looked so cool and green, I had to have the whole set. I joined Central Ohio Hosta Society to learn more about hostas and other shade plants.
I really got the gardening bug after that. I became a Master Gardener for Delaware County, Ohio. I also volunteered as a costumed gardener for the Ohio Village, an 1860’s reproduction of a small village run by the Ohio History Connection. I researched plants of the mid-19th century and redesigned the various gardens to be more in line with 1960’s garden designs and plants. Several hostas were available in the U.S. at that time thanks to horticultural trade that had opened with the far east.
Heirloom Hostas (1860 and Earlier)
fortunei ‘Auremarginata’ plantaginea
lancifolia siebildiana
lancifolia (variegated form) undulata
marginata ventricosa
marginata (variegated form) venusta
Over the last 30 years, I have grown 681 hosta varieties. Around 500 are growing on the property at any one time. I also grow around 250 daylilies in what little sun there is available. I do the weeding, fertilizing, slug & deer control. Tom takes care of the lawn, the edging, paths, and the spring/fall clean up.
Beth Mitchell’s & Jim Rush’s Garden
Located on a corner lot in Worthington, the eclectic garden of Jim Rush and Beth Mitchell is a hodge-podge with a variety of annuals, perennials, local exotic flowers and cultivars from across the nation. The Rush/Mitchell Garden includes multiple types of bananas, plumeria, alocasia, hostas, dahlias, daylilies, bird of paradise, and a 130-year-old night blooming cereus to name a few. Both children and adults enjoy the small koi pond and a 60-item scavenger hunt around the entire yard. The hunt includes a flying pig, alligator, turtles, dinosaur, dogs, and other creatures hidden among the plants. Our garden is something to be shared. The long hours spent on maintenance are a blessing to the soul and beneficial to our health. Gardens are a great stress reliever! Both Beth and Jim enjoy sharing their passion for gardening with friends, neighbors, and strangers who walk along the sidewalk. Most visitors leave with a plant, a cutting or just a peaceful and relaxed feeling. We look forward to hosting your visit to our yard during the 2026 National Hosta Conference in Columbus, Ohio.
Debi and Bill Gerrick’s Garden
In the beginning… about 25 years ago, there was a single Sum and Substance and two single-eyed Blue Angels acquired at a big-box store. Debi and Bill planted them in unamended soil in nice dry shade. The result was less than impressive. A while later the planting was supplemented by a mass of the green and white ones. Still not impressive.
Then one day Bill spied an amazing mature Halcyon (fresh from an expensive nursery) in someone else’s brand-new garden. Love at first sight!
Books on hostas yielded a shopping list of beautiful plants that no one would ever find in a nursery in this country. Bill did, however, learn a little bit about growing hostas. Plants were acquired, beds were amended and planting commenced. The results were encouraging, and more plants were added each year. It was only then that it became apparent that hostas are inherently invasive. The result was that there was no more grass in the backyard. The garden continues to expand with the addition of minis and planters of all shapes and sizes.
The garden has flourished, and this small city garden now boasts about 200 hosta cultivars together with assorted ferns, peonies, daylilies and other perennials.
Audrey & Larry Kise’s Garden
When Larry and I were married 13 years ago, I moved from a house in town with a sun filled yard to a house surrounded by woods on three sides. I filled the few sunny areas with expanded day lily beds. But, what to do with all the shade? Hostas were my logical solution.
Several trees had to be removed when we added an addition to our barn, this created an opportunity for my first hosta bed. While the barn addition was being constructed, I was busy clearing the underbrush for the future hosta garden. As this garden expanded the next year, we discovered a network of vines and roots making it very difficult to dig into the soil. Larry solved the problem by making raised beds by cutting 55 gallon metal barrels into sections. This proved very successful for growing hostas. Lately, I have used the barrel planters as a nursery for growing hosta from seed.
My first hosta garden was doing well but now I needed a new project. I cleaned out woods on the northeast side of our property and began filling it with hostas. In the beginning it was just the stripe along the woods but it grew within a couple years to its present size.
Although we see deer almost daily, they rarely eat our hostas. We have a rope fence that they could easily jump over but they do not. We spread Milorganite and spray the plants with homemade deer repellant. Our biggest concern since we had to take down a large maple tree in the front yard is too much sun in the newest section.
Larry deserves all the credit for installing the borders, the stone paths and digging the holes for me to plant.
Bill Behrens’s & Michael Josey’s Garden
I became interested in gardening when I bought my first house near the Ohio State University. It was a 1915 bungalow and the front yard faced north, shaded by an ancient magnolia tree. I was able to experiment with many types of shade-loving plants and fell in love with hostas. Michael is a long-time plant lover and maintains the sun gardens and house plants.
We moved to our current home in 2005 and it is three and a half heavily wooded acres. The previous owner already had foundation beds around the house and some in the woods. In 2010 we were a featured yard on the Marysville Master Gardener’s Tour so we stepped up our game and added 50 new varieties of hostas. There is a short trail in the woods in the front of the house which is always a nice respite in the heat of summer.
We have recently added beds at the edge of the back yard. Our hostas range from Blue Mouse Ears to Princess Wu. We don’t split them very often so some clumps are rather large. We’ve also had a lot of luck with Bottlebrush Buckeye shrubs, we have a stand of pawpaw trees and you’ll see several pots of bonsai around the pool.
