‘Frances Williams’ is one of our most popular hostas. Basically it’s like Hosta sieboldiana ‘Elegans’ but with a gold edge to the leaf and indeed it is thought to be a sport of ‘Elegans’. ‘Frances Williams’ itself has produced a number of sports and this new introduction, ‘Sara’s Sensation’, looks to be one of the best.

‘Sara’s Sensation’ is an altogether brighter plant with a much broader gold border and smaller blue-green centre – in effect each leaf is gold with a central blue-green flash. Its rounded leaves are very thick and corrugated indeed it’s thought to be a tetraploid – that is, with twice the normal number of chromosomes – which helps create this extra substance. With such thick leaves it’s likely to be slug resistant. It will slowly but steadily make a plant about 50cm/20in high and 1.2m/4ft across and make a fine specimen in shady borders. In early summer almost pure white flowers appear on short stems.

‘Sara’s Sensation’ has been around for some time, it was registered with the American Hosta Society back in 1998, but is only now available here in Britain for the first time. It was found as sport of ‘Frances Williams’ by Paul and Linda Hofer from Ohio, Paul also discovered one of the finest hostas of all, the gold-centred ‘Paul’s Glory’ which was Hosta of the Year in 1999.

You can order Hosta ‘Sara’s Sensation’ from Bali-Hai Nursery.