Companion Plants for your Hostas

Primarily grown for their beautiful foliage, hostas are long-lived, shade-loving perennials highly esteemed by gardeners. Easy and adaptable garden plants, there are hundreds of cultivars to choose from, ranging from incredibly tiny plants to giants, with leaves in pretty shades of green, chartreuse, gold, dusky blue, or beautifully variegated.

There is an endless variety of flower bulbs, perennials, shrubs, and trees that are suitable for companion planting with your hostas.

Here are a few rules to follow to create successful plant combinations.

• Hostas grow in USDA plant hardiness zones 3 through 9, and they perform best in part shade to full shade in fertile, moist, well-drained soil. Therefore, the best hosta companions are those that thrive under the same growing conditions.

• While shade is important for your hostas, do not plant your hostas under trees whose roots will compete directly with the roots of your hostas. For instance, beeches (Fagus), birches (Betula), cherries (Prunus), large maples (Acer), poplars (Populus), and willows (Salix) should be avoided.

• Do not plant your hosta near gum trees (Eucalyptus) and shagbark hickory (Carya ovata): these trees do shed their bark which may cause damage to underlying hostas. 

• Because most hostas have a broadly mounded habit, forming a dense mound of cascading leaves, they contrast nicely with carpeting or strongly upright plants.

• Use fine-textured plants to balance the bold texture of your hostas: the lance-shaped, heart-shaped, oval or rounded leaves of hostas pair beautifully with finely textured perennials such as bleeding hearts (Dicentra), foam flowers (Tiarella), bugbanes (Cimifuga), masterworts (Astrantia), toad lilies (Trycirtis) or the flower plumes of astilbes and goat beards (Aruncus). Ferns are also ideal fine-textured companions for your hostas in deep shade.

• Pair solid green hostas with perennials with showy white, cream or yellow leaf variegation such as Japanese sedge (Carex oshimensis) or variegated Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum).

• Pair blue hostas with pastel-colored coral bells (Heuchera), pink hardy geraniums, or the white blossoms of some spotted deadnettle (Lamium maculatum).

• Pair gold and yellow hostas with dark green or deep purple foliage plants such as black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscus) or carpet bugle (Ajuga).

• The ravishing foliage of hostas is not only attractive to humans. Slugs and snails are the most troublesome pests to hostas. They feed on their leaves and leave conspicuous holes. They can kill young seedlings by completely eating them.
• Use plant associations to deter slugs. Some herbaceous plants are less likely to be eaten by slugs and snails because they have a texture or chemical content that slugs and snails dislike. When hostas are mixed among these plants, the levels of damage can be significantly reduced.