Thursday Tour Garden Information
Thursday garden tours are by bus only. For Thursday, the bus transportation is included, free of charge, with your registration. The busses will be available starting mid-afternoon.
There is NO self-drive option available for the Thursday garden tours.
Carol Beal’s Garden
I grew up in a rural area with a father that had owned his own farm. Eventually we settled on a three-acre property where my father created a large weed free vegetable garden bordered by rows of beautiful flowers. On this new property there were Hosta, the green ones and the cream and green ones.
Fast forward to the 80’s when I purchased my own home. I could now use all the wonderful knowledge and love for the earth my father had instilled in me.
My yard is small, with a shady backyard that was a blank slate. The first thing I planted was starts of the Hosta from my Dad’s yard. I created a border alternating the green and green and white Hosta. Over the years I continued digging up the grass to create the border on all three sides of the yard creating what I consider a ‘grow where your happy’ garden. I love all flowers, which makes it difficult deciding which ones I have room for.
A friend introduced me to the Hosta Society and there went my original hostas. They were replaced with different varieties of hostas. By then I was bitten by the Hosta bug, I am now a full blown addict. At the time of this writing, I have nearly 70 Hosta in pots and double that planted in ground. I have flower beds on all sides of my house and garage. Gardening is my passion, Hosta my addiction!
Mariann & Joe Stewart’s Garden
Although we enjoy hostas and are adding more as our garden gets more shade, dwarf conifers are our passion. We have over 160 different varieties in our 1/3 acre space. I have been a member of the American Conifer society since 2006, and Mariann joined in 2010. Any of our labeled woodies that have a date prior to 2009 were brought from my previous garden. Our garden in Groveport was established in 2009 and we are still collecting.
Michael & Nichole Small‘s Garden
Casa de Hostas
Our gardening journey and love for hostas began in 2013 when we moved to Groveport, Ohio located in the Greater Columbus area. The property had several mature spruce and pine trees, but not much in the way of landscaping. Our families and friends brought plants from their own gardens, many of them hostas, to help start ours. We love the look of the different hostas, their hardiness, and the joy of expanding our collection every season. As our love for hostas grew, so did our flower beds, which now boasts a variety of old favorites and modern classics. After several years toiling away in the garden, we finally met other hosta lovers at auctions where we tried to buy every hosta. They invited us to attend the Groveport Garden Club’s and learned about the Central Ohio Hosta Society. We had to join and the rest is history. We hope you enjoy our hostas as much as we do.
The Jeanne and Dick Barbee Hosta Garden
Jeanne and our daughter Patty started collecting hostas in the 1990’s. Jeanne took some leaves to the COHS leaf show and got a June leaf on the head table. I stopped baling hay to go see it and that got me hooked on hostas. We had shown Holstein cattle for 30 years and showing a hosta leaf was a lot easier. We went to the 2005 Convention and have been going ever since. In 2006 we started training to be judges.
After living in Grove City for 45 years we sold our house to CVS drug store. In 2006 we built our dream home on 50 acres that we had used to pasture heifers and grow Christmas trees. We moved 600 pots of flowers of all kinds. The plants were over wintered in the pots and we did not lose very many.
We have done all the gardening without outside help. Daylilies and other perennials have been added for color. The evergreen trees provided shade, but they started dying. We began using shade cloth in some places for additional shade. After losing all of the shade in one area, we built a pergola.
We have won 3 best of shows and 6 Sweepstakes at the national convention shows. We won best of show and sweepstakes awards at the COHS show.
Plants to look for in our garden are June, Elegans, Victory, Paradigm, Leading Lady, Independence, Key West and I Dream of Jeanne. We have over 700 hostas. We also grow plants for the COHS auction and other plant sales in the nursery bed by the red barn.
The Patty Estadt Garden
I began collecting hostas in 1990 when I moved into a house that had plentiful shade from mature trees. I found them at local greenhouses and ordered from national catalogs. By 1994 I typed up my first list of 66 different hosta varieties so I wouldn’t buy varieties I already had. In 1996 I started attending the Great Lakes Region Hosta College with my mom. We learned so much and discovered many new sources for plants. I began as a member of the Midland Hosta Society until we formed the Central Ohio Hosta Society. I attended two national conventions, then life got busy. I am a member of the Central Ohio Hosta Society and the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs, Derby Garden Club.
This garden began from scratch in 2007. Over 85 hostas spent the winter in pots before being transplanted to the north side of the house, not all made it. There were no trees for shade at that time. The hostas in front of the garage are more recent additions now that there is some shade from the magnolia tree. My garden beds survive with the help of Mother Nature. I have not added systematic watering. The gardens how include 95 varieties of hosta and over 80 different daylilies. In addition, I try to select perennials that are drought tolerant, deer resistant, and attractive to bees, butterflies and gold finches. I plant tall zinnias each year because the pollinators love them and they keep blooming until frost.