New plants for the new year....I've been working on my annual column about the 2013 batch of Great Plant Picks from the Miller Botanical Garden. There are worse ways to spend the waning days of the year....and I love this year's theme of petite plants for the smaller garden.
I'd never heard of 'Blue Mouse Ears' until Richie Steffen of the Miller Garden sent me a photo of this charming dwarf hosta. It beat out tough competition to make this year's GPP list not only because of its compact size, but because it's considered one of the very best mini hostas available. Not only are its leaves a dusky, distinctive shade of blue, but it combines robust growth with diminutive size. Can you imagine a more perfect container plant? And yes, as you might suspect from the name, the leaves are rounded, with mice-like pointed tips.
'Blue Mouse Ears' is more than cute, though. It's a tough plant, truly perenial, and sports lavender flowers atop short, stubby stems in summer. Really, this hosta is tiny...it grows all of about 6 - 8 inches tall in five years, and over time might form a clump a foot across....Slug resistance? No word on that .....I'd keep it elevated out of reach in a slippery-sided pot....
I'll debut a bunch more exciting GPP picks in my column, which will run in the Flower and Garden Show issue of Pacific Northwest in mid-February....and in the meantime, here's Hosta 'Blue Mouse Ears' for summer dreaming....
Photo by Richie Steffen
