You don’t need to be a hostaholic to remember Red Ninja

Since I share my garden on social media I occasionally get some very pointed (to put it mildly) critiques, and a recent one was oddly specific.

“I like your garden but it bothers me tremendously that you don’t know the name of most of your hostas.”

Mea culpa. She’s not wrong.

There is an entire shady bed in my garden full of interesting hostas and I can only name about three of them that are relatively easy to identify.

Most of them were grown from 2-inch plugs purchased through an online plant co-op in the days when such things were done on “message boards,” which was the closest thing to social media at the time. A lot them came nameless, and for many others I didn’t bother with a label because my younger brain had room for recalling the names of plants without a label.

That plan has not aged well, so I now have a lot of nameless hostas. And since there are more than 12,000 named cultivars of hosta, it’s pretty challenging to identify them after the fact.

But here’s the other thing: I don’t actually care that I don’t know their names. Hostas are plants that keep on giving, so if I want more of a specific variety, I can just divide the plant.

I think I know why the commenter was bothered “tremendously.” She’s a hostaholic. The term, bestowed upon those who have an obsession with hostas and collect prized varieties, is not a disparagement. I can recognize and appreciate a gardener who needs to know the name of a plant. It’s how I feel about clematis and dahlias.

There is at least one hosta that I’m certain I’d have no trouble identifying, however, because it is something truly different, and that’s saying something when you’re talking about a plant category with so many named varieties.

Red Ninja hosta is currently the most famous plant in the world. Just awarded the coveted Royal Horticultural Society Plant of the Year award at the Chelsea Flower Show, it looks like it might be generated by artificial intelligence.

It’s the first red leaf hosta to hit the market. Although there have been plenty of hostas with red stems, Red Ninja — pronounced “Nina” and named for its Danish breeder Ninja Kramer — has truly red leaves on which the color is said to persist all through the growing season.

It’s a modest sized hosta, growing to just 14 inches high, and has the best color in part sun, a departure from the shady norm typically sought for hostas.

To say it has the plant world buzzing would be an understatement. The North American distributor that secured the rights to sell the hosta on this side of the Atlantic was on hand for the announcement at the flower show and was quick to grab a plant and pose with the trophy.

I won’t be among those frantically hunting down Red Ninja. Although it would be fun to have, I’m sure that some hostaholic would appreciate it far more than I would.

And I guarantee they’d never forget the name.