lack of water ... what creates your shade ... some trees are just problems ... did you find a lot of tree roots when you dug them up ????

hosta can also fairy circle ...which can also be an issue of not enough water.. or not bare rooting them at planting ...

i have sand.. and when i plant a potted gob of peat based media ... when the sand heats and dries .. it can actually wick water out of the peat.. and if the hosta is aggressive enough.. it will grow out into native sand ... and then the center dies ... so i avoid this by bare rooting.. and watering the heck out of them in the sand ...

btw.. what are the tree leaves in the second pic.. something in the maple family???

ken

It's difficult to delete a photo on Houzz. The problem is "selecting" it. You can click on it (it sometimes takes several clicks). You'll know you have it when it shows up with a line around it with little squares around it. (Don't go too fast clicking as you may miss it and have to click some more.) Moving your cursor to another spot may help, too.

It will look like this:

bkay

Thanks Ken for your comments. This area is on the north side of our house and the east side of a covered deck so the house creates a lot of shade. We do have several tall ash trees in the yard but they are maybe 30 feet from this area. I don't come across tree roots in this spot. The soil is pretty heavy clay, amended with compost. Last summer was exceptionally dry so I probably should keep an eye on water issues. I rarely water this area as it seems to stay moist but could be an issue.

Interesting bit about bare rooting transplants. I will keep that in mind.

Well I dug up the whole bunch and moved the little ones to my "tending bed" where I can look after them.

The leaves are from filipendula rubra, probably in too much shade but nice shape none the less.

Bkay--thank you for the info on photos. I am still getting used to the Houzz format. I tried several times to hit backspace when cursor was directly behind photo but no go on that.