Wide Brim Hosta Plants

Hosta Wide Brim

If you're after handsome planting for shade, Wide Brim hostas are a great solution. Although this variety does send up some lovely midsummer flowers spikes, decorated in pale-lilac funnel-shaped flowers, it's the lush foliage that's most celebrated in hostas. 

Browse more Hosta varieties, or all of our perennial plants.

The leaves of Wide Brim are particularly majestic: large, heart-shaped, and cream coloured. Splashed onto each leaf is a painterly centre of rich emerald green. They're extraordinarily tactile, too, with a wonderful seersucker texture. Maybe that is why it has won a Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit.

In the garden

Use hostas to create a carpet of sumptuous foliage groundcover in a woodland setting, or any east, west or north-facing border. They're great in pots, too, brightening up a shady patio, where you can give them a little more protection from slugs and snails, which are their nemesis. Try slug traps nearby or rings of crushed shells around your hostas to ward them off. Plant them in generous groups and any slug damage will be much less obvious. Plant forking in a good amount of garden compost or leaf mould, as they don't like to dry out, and combine with other shade-loving perennials such as ferns, ajuga and more varieties of hostas. A group of them under an acer, perhaps dotted with a few boulders and interspersed with Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra), will create a contemplative oriental-style area in your garden.

Features

• Colour: pale purple flower spikes
• Flowering: Jul
• Foliage: broad, heart-shaped leaves edged in a wide splash of cream
• Height: 50cm
• Spread: 90cm
• Spacing: 80cm
• Position: shade or part shade
• Soil: moist and well-drained
• RHS Award of Garden Merit 

Fun fact

Hostas are members of the Asparagaceae family, so it should be no surprise to learn that they're perfectly edible. In fact, the Japanese have been eating them for centuries. They're best enjoyed when young, the new shoots being particularly tender and tasty. Sauté or stir-fry just as you would any other tasty greens.

Hosta Wide Brim prefers partial to full shade. Grows well in any fertile, moist but well-drained soil, as long as it doesn't dry out. Works well as ground cover in a woodland border.

Water well until established. Protect from slugs and snails. Removed faded flower spikes and tatty leaves. Divide congested clumps in early spring. Mulch with garden compost in spring.