For our first blog ...a bit about us first, before we focus on the wonderful world of Hostas
Rewela Hostas is a family run business, selling Hostas face to face, and on-line. We are based in a small village in North Yorkshire at the very top end of the Vale of York on the side of the Howardian Hills, in an ‘Area of outstanding natural beauty.
View of Howardian Hills from the nursery
Many years ago, we moved here to a house with an empty paddock. We set about creating a lovely garden. Eventually, the National Garden Scheme deemed it good enough for entry into their little yellow book. I started opening my garden to show it off to the general public, raising money for the NGS charities. We have been opening ever since and have raised well over £35,000 in 14 years. Part of this is from selling plants, on the open days.
NGS Logo
The Hostas were very popular. However we only had a small selection to choose from. We started increasing the size of the collection, to give customers a bigger choice, particularly the returning ones.
Now in 2024 we can offer over 400 different varieties from a collection of over 800.
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We started buying our favourites, such as Liberty, Dream Weaver, Fragrant Bouquet, Georgia Sweetheart, Paul’s Glory & Touch of Class, amongst others? This was mainly done by buying just one or two of each variety. Waiting for them to grow big enough before splitting. This was very slow, and there were still too few for selling.
It took a few years, but we managed eventually to get a collection together of some 200 varieties. We started splitting our stock to make more plants for sale and carried on increasing our collection by buying in larger numbers of smaller plants. This was a substantial investment into the business.
In April 2021, both myself and my partner entered, into the world of retirement. We felt this would be a lovely little retirement project for us both, but we needed a good website. Something new for us.
By the middle of May 2021, we had achieved this. A sharp learning curve for both of us. With a little research and a lot of effort, we feel we have created a good website, that has been created from a customer point of view. www.rewelahostas.com. We have had many great comments about how easy it is to navigate and buy from.
We started selling on the website with our first order on 11th May 2021.
Views of the Garden & Hosta Nursery
The ‘stock’ plants are grown in a variety of clay & ceramic display pots, as well as one of each variety on a stock bench and planted in the garden. We keep at least 3 of each variety, but 5 of each of the miniatures for propagation purposes. This should be enough to keep a good selection for sales from splitting our own stock.
Growing the Hostas this way also plays a valuable role for when people visit the nursery. They can see each variety in a different situation and can decide whether the variety is suitable as a container plant or is possibly better in open ground. They can also see the plant in its mature form.
Choices can be informative ones based on what they can see, the sizes, the leaf colours, or even sometimes the flowers colour or fragrance.
Visiting the nursery is by appointment all the details can be found on our website.
Our future blogs will include lots of information and advice on how to enjoy Hostas.......
John Plant
Rewela Hostas
Thank you for posting this first blog. Your approach is very interesting; it must all involve a great deal of work. It's a good job you are retired! You have supplied me with some lovely hostas in the past; I look forward to ordering from you again in the near future.
Kind regards, Philip W.
Lovely to receive - thank you for sharing - you have done “wonders” in that very beautiful location.
Congratulations and well done!
love from your Lincolnshire cousin Doreen XX