Don Dean was first introduced to hosta in 1984, when his mother gave him a sizeable chunk of Hosta ‘Undulata’, taken from an old established clump in her yard. Don and family moved to their current home site, located upon a wooded lot in Ramsey, Minnesota, in 1987. He joined a local garden club looking for solutions to a newfound gardening problem, shade. A visit to a hosta collector’s garden created the ‘hook’ and set Don upon a path involving hosta from that point to the present.

Don volunteered as a bus captain for the 1990 AHS National Convention in Minneapolis, MN. He attended the Midwest Regional convention that same year. Conversation ran wild, leading to him co-founding and becoming the first president of the Minnesota Hosta Society. He began growing seeds under lights in 1991.

Judy Feltman has been gardening for over 30 years and has lived at ‘our little house here in the woods’ since 2006. She is passionate about collecting and caring for her plants, plus she enjoys sharing her gardens with individuals along with local gardening groups. Judy has been a Master Gardener for more than 20 years and is a past president of the Birmingham Fern Society.  

In 2010, Judy started her retail business after the Central Alabama Hosta Society stopped conducting hosta sales. Hostas on the Hill Gardens and Nursery is located at her Leeds, Alabama, home. She had grown the hostas offered for sale by the Society the previous three years. Judy is a member of the American Hosta Growers Association; she currently serves as President of the Central Alabama Hosta Society and as Director of the Dixie Regional Hosta Society.

Marcia Sully, a retired educator with thirty-three years of service, has always had a passion for gardening. Her interest in hostas intensified when she joined the Western New York Hosta Society. Her enthusiasm increased in proportion to the size of her gardens in Eden, New York, and hostas now dominate the landscape.  

Gregg Peterson’s interest in the “friendship plant” began in 1999 with the purchase of several non-descript hostas to fill a shady corner of his yard. The hosta “bug” bit, and he and his wife, Amy, have since had over 1100 different varieties at their home in Roseville, Minnesota, then 250 varieties at a home on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, and now, approximately 530 different cultivars at their current home in Oakdale, Minnesota. The one hosta Gregg credits for starting his addiction is Hosta montana ‘Aureomarginata’, and he still loves spotting a clump in a tour garden. H. ‘Striptease’ and its family of sports are also favorites. Recently, he has developed a special affinity for the “minis” and enjoys incorporating them into container gardens. 

For over two years, Gregg was a Master Gardener in Kitsap County, Washington, and for more than eight years he has occupied that role in Ramsey County, Minnesota. He worked for over six years at a local retail nursery in the Twin Cities, serving as the “hosta guy” in the perennials area, helping gardeners with their hosta and shade companion plant selections and questions

Cindy Deutekom, from Blackstock, Ontario, has had quite a journey into the hosta world. Like many, her mother had that green and white one that came up beautifully in the spring and before long was just a series of holes. She kept resisting her mother’s offers of a clump, complete with slugs! Since her mother loved hostas, Cindy began buying them for her for Mother’s Day and birthdays. Finally, it hit her, “Hey, they can be beautiful!” She was hooked.

Reldon Ramsey discovered the diversity of hostas for the first time in the Spring of 2002, as he collected perennials for a memorial butterfly garden for his wife, who had died of cancer the previous November. He purchased a few for a shady spot and kept finding more varieties. Soon, hostas had become a full-blown addiction. Next, he found online forums devoted to hosta and then hosta clubs, joining the Shady Choice Hosta Society in 2002 and the Russ O’Harra Hosta Society in 2003. Reldon attended the 2003 Winter Scientific Meeting, followed that summer by his first convention, the Midwest Regional in St. Louis. At every hosta event, Reldon had the opportunity to meet more online hosta forum friends.