With dense wavy foliage, striking contrast, and summer blooms, what's not to love about this fiercely beautiful hosta? 'Kiwi Spearment' is a real show-stopper from any angle and adds much needed color and tropical drama to the shaded areas of your garden. Its foliage looks near white to chartreuse with lime green margins. In the heat of summer the leaves take on a more fleshed out green tone and at the beginning of the season it sends up delicately lovely light purple blooms. Along with its amazing visuals this plant is also very tolerant of cold and can survive winters even in zone 3. Impressive! It is not only lovely but also hardy and low maintenance! Add it to any shady corner for some needed bright green color and foliage interest! Charming and cool as a cucumber, you can't go wrong with the 'Kiwi Spearmint' hosta!
The dry, sparse appearance of bareroot perennials can be alarming to the novice gardener, but in reality ordering bare root is often the smarter choice. Foliage and blooms can be seductive, but the health and long-term potential of a plant truly lies in its roots. Bareroot plants have several advantages over plants in containers—bare roots are less likely to be harmed in the shipping process, their timing is easier to control, and they are field-grown for larger, healthier root systems. This why Wayside Gardens has had great success with bare root plants, and you can too!
It is safer to ship plants in bareroot form because there is no risk in harming new growth, and therefore the plant actually has a better chance of making it safely into the customer’s garden.
And thanks to refrigerated storage, the timing of bareroot perennials can be precisely controlled. "(Bareroot perennials) are dormant," explains JPPA Lead Horticulturist Benjamin Chester, "But as soon as they leave the refrigerated storage they'll begin breaking dormancy." And once the plant 'wakes up', it is ready to begin the growing season in earnest, which means it will quickly catch up to the level of container plants.
The most important benefit of bareroot perennials is that they can be field grown rather than confined to containers. The bareroot Cherry Cheesecake Hibiscus pictured hereperfectly illustrates the difference between a field-grown perennial and a containerized one. Wayside Gardens used to offer this variety in a quart container, like the Monarda next to it. But the Hibiscus was simply too cramped in that space, so Wayside switched to growing it in the earth and selling it bare root. The result is a thick, fibrous mass of roots that used to fill up several cubic feet of soil and which, even in its bare, pruned form would be too large to fit back into the 1 Quart container. What a difference a little space makes! While small and slow-growing cultivars can start well in containers, large and vigorous cultivars need more room to stretch out and develop a solid root system.
