Mark Zilis has been working with hostas for over thirty years. He is an owner of Q & Z Nursery in Rochelle, Illinois. His tissue culture lab and breeding program have turned out many new hosta cultivars.

In addition to his nursery work, Mark is a leading author and authority on the species, Hosta. He has visited hundreds of hosta gardens around the world and has visited areas of Japan, Korea and China to see the plants growing in the wild.

In 2009, he released The Hostapedia, (ISBN 978-0-9679440-1-2) the most complete work on the plant ever. It includes descriptions of about 7,000 hostas which have been named and the about 4,000 of those that have been officially registered with the American Hosta Society. This is a huge book that you will want to keep in your library and not have to carry around too much.

To help you wade through all the thousands of hostas discussed in this book, we at PGC have compiled a listing of "Mark Zilis' Outstanding Hosts".