ROHS is working with the Iowa Arboretum and Gardens to establish and maintain an AHS National Display Garden, using the existing collections supplemented with some additional hostas.
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David McKinney, the Curator of Collections and Grounds at the arboretum, has outlined some plans for expanding the hosta collections, with particular emphasis on plants from Iowa growers, as shown below (with slight edits). If you have suggestions or can contribute in some way, please contact him at the address below.
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Jan 18 message from David McKinney:
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Hey Hosta Friends!
Now that the Iowa Arboretum & Gardens has been recognized as an American Hosta Society National Display Garden, I'm hoping to continue to expand and improve our hosta collections. While we do have several hundred varieties already, there is plenty of room for more!
My curatorial goals for the hostas specifically revolve around the Iowa Hosta Collection started in 1994. When the garden was relocated and expanded in 2002 and again in 2018, hostas from hybridizers across the state were added to complement the work of O'Harra and the ROHS. The O'Harra collection is well represented (although not complete, of course), but several other Iowa hybridizers have been hard at work these last couple of decades adding hundreds of their own varieties to the market (as you very well know).
I am specifically looking to curate collections of plants from these Iowa hybridizers and need some help:
Joy Adams
Marlys Anderson
Kirk Brill
Gretchen Harshbarger
Bob Hird
Greg Johnson
Jerry Hadrava
Frank Riehl
Ed Schulz
Jim Schwarz
Ron Simmering
John and Elizabeth Stratton
Trudy van Wyk
Jeff and Marie White
Fleeta Brownell Woodroffe
Doyle Woods
I have a wish list of Iowa hostas missing from the arboretum's collection that I can confirm are not living on the grounds. The list is organized by hybridizer(s). If you know of someone who might be willing to share/sell a division from their personal collection, a mail order nursery with these varieties, or if the variety is a part of another public garden's collection, I would like to know. Feel free to connect me with any of the folks on this list that might still be around, too.
Feel free to send this list to other hostaphiles in your circles. If there are other Iowans with registered OR unregistered named varieties that can be added to the collection, I'd also love to know that.
*some of these varieties have been donated to the arboretum before. Depending on the curator/other staff at the time, many of them have gone missing or died while in our care. After I completed a survey of all living hosta plants in 2022 (in anticipation of the 2023 AHS Convention) these are the confirmed varieties that are not living. I apologize on behalf of the arboretum if you have donated or coordinated the acquisition of these plants before and we lost it. A list of all our living Iowa hosta varieties can be found here:
https://iowaarboretum.org/ourplants/iowahostagarden/
David McKinney
Curator of Collections and Grounds
Iowa Arboretum
1875 Peach Avenue
Madrid, IA 50156
515.795.3216 ext.1005
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