Heartland Hosta and Shade Plant Society
Spring Meeting
Guest Speakers Mike and Susan Weber
March 18, 2023
9:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Woods Chapel Community Of Christ
500 NE Woods Chapel Rd, Lees Summit, MO 64064
Adding Conifers to Your Hosta Garden
Mike and Susan Weber are well-known in the Champaign-Urbana area among hosta lovers, daylily connoisseurs, conifer collectors and almost anyone who wants to see a collection of a “whole bunch of plants.” They are both charter members of the Illinois Prairie Hosta Society (est. 2004); Mike was the Society’s first Vice-President in charge of programs, and Susan was the President from 2008 – 2010. Susan, along with fellow IPHS members MaryAnn Metz, Deb Guardia, and Karen Meyer, was instrumental in citing and designing the IPHS National Hosta Display Garden at the University of Illinois Arboretum.
Mike and Susan are also members of the American Hemerocallis Society, the Central Illinois Hosta Society, the Midwest Hosta Society, the American Hosta Society, and the American Conifer Society. Mike’s gardening experience goes back to the farm he was raised on, and to his degree in agricultural science; and Susan’s love of gardening hardscape and design comes not only from her college seminar in Japan at the Ikenobo School of Ikebana, but also from Mike’s love of most all trees, woodies, perennials, and annuals. Susan says it is the ultimate challenge for a designer to somehow harmoniously display over 400 hosta, 100 daylilies, 100 conifers, and numerous other ornamental woodies, perennials, and annuals.
From 1997 until 2007, Mike and Susan opened their gardens in Champaign every spring, gave tours, traded gardening tips, and sold hostas and companion plants from their garden to help subsidize their ever-growing collection of specimens. Throughout those years, Mike developed an e-serve list through which he would contact people who came to the open gardens with tidbits of expertise he had picked up from various sources including his own expertise in horticulture and agricultural science; he even published his own soil recipe, a basic “pie dough” with various amendations for particular types of perennials and annuals. Some of those people from the “early years” still come by to exchange ideas every year. Everyone knows not to ring the doorbell. Just go on out back where you are sure to find Mike and sometimes Susan, totally covered in garden soil, leaves, etc., still working in the garden.
Mike and Susan’s garden has been on the Master Gardener Walk three times, probably due to the ever-changing collections created by adding Mike’s newest passion to the garden. In 2020, Mike decided to take out his frustration with COVID and its resulting shut-down of out usual summer garden convention activities by installing a native prairie plant area on our daughter and son-in-law’s property on the southwest edge of town. That garden is scheduled for the Master Garden Walk in 2025.