I admit it.

I’m one of the those gardeners who cuts off the hosta flower stalks before they can bloom.

It seems like heresy, or at least counter intuitive, but hosta blooms add a fussy, high-maintenance element to what is otherwise a serene and elegant shade plant. Most hosta flowers are a sickly shade of pale lavender, short-lived, get stuck all over the hosta’s foliage when they fall, and leave behind unattractive brown stalks behind that need to be cut off.

But I make one exception.                                                      

She is a stately blue hosta, happily sited beneath an Amur cherry. Even her fleshy buds are beautiful.                           

But her flowers are even more so.                                      She’s like white lilies rising above a pool of cool blue, mysterious and lovely.                                                                           She’s an exquisite exception to the rule.