hosta Lakeside Zing Zang

Hi All!  My name is Steve and I Love Hostas!  I have been growing them for many years (sometimes more years than I care to count!).  I currently have a small nursery with about 500 different varieties.  We sell most of these 500 varieties here on Ebay, as well as on our own website.  My company is called Casita Azul.  In Spanish that translates to "little blue house", which accurately describes my home, located at my nursery.

We have begun to do some hybridizing.  We cross pollinate some plants by hand, carefully collecting the seeds in Fall.  We also collect seeds from nature's own creations.  We grow our seedlings indoors during Winter, and transplant them to the garden in Summer.  Since hostas take several years to mature to show their full color, size and texture we are not ready to introduce any special new plants quite yet.  It is exciting to sow the seeds and watch the plants emerge and grow!  It is interesting to see how seedlings of the same seed pod grow up to be very different from one another, and different from the parents.

heuchera Peach Flambe

Our new passion is the colorful little heuchera, or Coralbells as it is known my many.  This hardy little plant has gone through an amazing transformation in the last few years.  It is now available in about 50 colors/patterns, many of which grow in all parts of the U.S., including down South.

We find this plant to be relatively easy to grow.  Once established it is drought-tolerant here in the upper Midwest.  It winters-over very well, with the plants being evergreen even under the snow!  It is promoted as being 'deer-proof', but the last few winters we have had a herd of deer visiting our nursery and munching on our heuchera.  I was devistated the first year, expecting the plants to be a total loss.  Much to my surprise the plants did emerge in Spring, bigger and better than ever!!  It seems that the deer are actually beneficial, giving us better plants each year.  Who would have thought?