Dixie Hosta

We had a great meeting on May 5 & 6 in Greensboro, hosted by the North Carolina Hosta Society and headed up by Bob and Nancy Solberg and Willa Sackfield. The 70 attendees were well received and well fed. We had a good selection of vendors and a great selection of plants. Vendor sales totaled $3,075 with Dixie receiving 20% of the proceeds. Thanks, vendors, for keeping our checkbook in the black.

The Dixie Board meeting was held on Friday afternoon. Due to an excellent board meeting in Memphis last September we had very little new business. We officially added Virginia and North Carolina to the Dixie Region Constitution and Bylaws. The Alabama Hosta Society representative, Audrey Menniefield, volunteered her club as host for the next Dixie meeting in Birmingham. The Board accepted the offer (more in this newsletter about the next meeting).

Prior to the Friday evening auction, Bob Solberg of Green Hill Farm gave us another of his wonderful talks about the future of hostas. He told us what today’s hybridizers are producing and what we should look for at nurseries in the coming years.

The auction was fun with plants donated by the vendors and attendees. We had hostas and companion plants, a few trees, garden art, markers and some fun items. Doug Beilstein provided four sets of nine seedling plants from his seedling beds to auction off. They were a big hit and raised over $150. Although we had a small group of bidders, the auction brought in $2,160.

Saturday morning, we loaded two buses and hit the road for a day of garden tours. We visited Audrey Wood’s beautiful garden, which included over 1,000 hosta cultivars. We then traveled to Graham Ray’s shade garden, which had huge trees, some rare perennials and shrubs, and a unique vegetable garden. We had a supper box lunch as we viewed the Green Hill Farm hosta garden in the Greensboro Arboretum. I did not know you could grow some of those varieties that big in the South. Bob Solberg said it was all due to the months of soil preparation and outstanding support from the arboretum staff. Our last stop was the gardens of Wyatt Lefever and his vast rhododendron collection. What a wonderful backdrop to his beautiful and huge hostas and other plants.

After a chance to get a cold drink, we heard from Doug Beilstein, who belongs to the Fraternal Order of Seedy Fellows (FOOSF). Doug’s slides took us through his extensive seed program he used to hybridize new hostas. He showed us how he pollinates the plants, labels each seed pod, collects the seeds and plants them under many rows of lights. Doug has produced thousands of unique seedlings and registered some wonderful new cultivars. Following Doug, we heard from Judith and Dick Tyler of Pine Knot Farm. They are experts in the world of hellebores and have co-authored a new book on these wonderful plants. The books were available for sale. They showed slides of some great new hellebores with some unbelievable color options.

Although we had a small group, we enjoyed the intimacy of getting to meet and know every attendee. As always, we made new friends, bought some wonderful hostas and had a great weekend. Thanks again to our hosts for their hard work and support for this special meeting.