Doug

About Me

Employment at a local horticultural center, Kingwood Center, during my junior and senior high school days sparked a life long interest in and enthusiasm for plants. Planting leftover annuals and perennials around my parent's home was the spark. Following graduation from dental school, home ownership required landscape expertise. Trial and error led to shade perennials.

A chance meeting with Van Wade (lives 20 miles away) and an expanding hobby (developing The Blueberry Patch, a u-pick blueberry farm) led to opening a retail greenhouse selling annuals and perennials. A rapidly growing collection of hostas (over 1200 cultivars) and friend's encouragement to plant some open pollinated hosta seeds has now taken root. I started growing op seeds in 1998. By 1999 I had graduated to (with true hostaholic fever), hybridizing my many cultivars.

For the last several years I have collected 30-40,000 seeds in the fall (both op and known crosses) and planted them in November. By June of the following year I have culled to 2500 plants which are then taken to our farm (The Blueberry Patch), and planted in the ground. After 2 years in the ground they are culled once again, transplanted, and then left to mature. Starting in 2004 and finishing in 2005, due to the sale of the Blueberry Patch, the hosta seedlings will be relocated to our home in Mansfield, Ohio. Viewing is still welcomed with advanced notice to us.

If I have a hybridizing goal, it would be to develop fast growing, different shaped hosta leaves in medium to small size clumps. Plants with partial puckering, folds in the leaf, and pointed leaf tips are also favorites. I hope you enjoy your experience with the friendship plant as much as I do.