Christmas Candy Hosta

Light Needs

Full Shade to Partial Shade

(0 - 4 Hours Of Direct Sunlight)

Mature Height

14 Inches

Mature Spread

2 Feet

Growing Zones

3 to 9

This beauty will win your heart with its lovely foliage. It has striking, variegated leaves of green with white centers that will brighten your shade garden. The flower stalks, called ‘racems,’ hold bell-like, lavender-colored blossoms in midsummer. Hummingbirds are attracted to the flowers. A reliable and hardy plant, it is 14-inches high with 22-inch scapes.

This plant has a mounded growth habit. Introduced to the United States from Europe in the early 1800s, hostas are native to China, Japan, and Korea. You can utilize Christmas Candy in a variety of ways: use it as a filler in combination planters, grow it as a specimen or as the focal point of your shade border, or pair it with other white flowering plants to grow in a moonlight garden. Christmas Candy is the perfect companion for other shade perennials, such as astilbe, Dicentra (bleeding heart), ferns, Tiarella (foam flower), and Tradescantia (spiderwort).

Christmas Candy Hosta Care

Plant in rich, moist soil that is high in organic matter. This hosta, however, can survive in a wide range of soils. It requires an average amount of water – about 1 inch per week. If you plant your hosta in summer, it will need more water until the root system is developed. To conserve water, mulch with shredded bark, shredded leaves, or pine needles. You may add a balanced fertilizer in spring as the leaves emerge. Avoid an excessive amount of high nitrogen fertilizer. This plant thrives on part-shade to shade, but too dark a location will cause a slower growth rate.

Pruning is unnecessary except for damaged leaves and dead flowers. Some gardeners like to trim off hosta flowers before they mature so that they do not distract from the foliage. Christmas Candy’s bell-like, lavender blooms, however, are too pretty to remove. Before winter arrives, rake up and dispose of dead leaves to reduce chances of disease or insect pests.

Christmas Candy Hosta Spacing

Correct spacing of hostas is good horticultural practice. Using a coarse bark mulch and proper spacing between plants allows good circulation to create a dry, rough surface that slugs dislike. The right spacing for Christmas Candy is 24 inches between plant centers.