How are the flowers doing in that bed? What flowers? What kind of trees are making the shade? How much shade? What zone and state are you in? What kind of soil do you have? Do you know what a vole is? Do the hostas look healthy and just stay small or do they look sickly?

Bobs hosta gossip is out. Check out his advice on how to grow hosta

https://www.hostahosta.com/gossip.html

It's always a good read from the guy that lives hosta

Miniature hostas!

Hi MiMi, welcome to the Hosta Forum! It would be great to see a picture of your slow growers and to know where you are. If you want to add your growing zone, you can click on "Your Houzz" in the upper right hand corner, then click Edit Profile and look on the left hand side for Advanced Settings

Once you are in the Advanced Settings, scroll way down until you find "Climate Zone for Garden Forums". Then search for your location and add your zone and location. It really helps when you are seeking advice/information about growing because a lot is location dependent.

Some hosted need more sun than others....google the type you have.

As someone has already mentioned, your zone would be helpful. I'm in Texas (zone 8a), and find it hard to grow hosta in the ground. There are several reasons for that. One, it doesn't get cold enough some years to meet the chilling requirements for hosta. We have alkaline soil, and hosta prefer acid soil. We do not have great drainage, and hosta have to have well draining soil to thrive. They need lots of water, but again they need good drainage. It gets pretty dry and hot in the summer. So, growing hosta in the ground is a challenge. If one can grow a nice sized hosta in the ground here, they are considered an excellent gardener.

However, hosta do pretty well here in pots, as long as you have decent shade and keep them watered.

Hope that helps.

bkay