Our guest speaker on Saturday, October 24, 2009 will be Dr. Doug Beilstein, a hosta hybridizer and retired dentist from Mansfield, Ohio.

Doug's initial experience in gardening started during the summers of his junior and senior high school years at The Kingwood Center, a 47-acre horticultural estate in Mansfield, Ohio. This early exposure to plants, bed plantings, shrub management, mulching, watering and fertilizing proved to be very valuable experience for him.

His twenty year co-ownership of the Blueberry Patch, a u-pick fruit farm, with its involvement in greenhouse sales of annuals and perennials, provided yet more experience in the growing and care of plants. It was during this period that Van Wade of Wade & Gatton Nursery introduced him to hostas. It was the beginning of a lifelong addiction.

In the mid 1990s, Doug filled his spare time growing hostas from OP (open pollinated) seed. Each summer designed crosses were made and the following fall and winter seedlings were grown and culled. In the month of May he planted his seedlings in the ground or in pots and after 10 years of evaluation he filed his first 6 hosta registrations in 2007. Doug is also an Executive Vice-President of the American Hosta Society.

So bring your lunch at noon and mingle with hosta friends and PLEASE BRING A DESSERT to share. The program will begin about 1:00 p.m.