Would Japanese Maples be considered in this thread? Because we have two very large, very mature Japanese Maples in our yard, each having at least 7-8 hostas completely surrounding them. along with ferns, coral bells, and the like. the hostas are doing great! haven't experienced any of the problems spoken about above. in fact, the hostas are thriving there. the biggest problem we had regarding this issue was getting past the roots of the maple in order to get the hostas in the ground. they made digging holes for the hostas a real pain. but once we were able to locate the gaps between the roots it was all good. cant say the dreaded "maple effect" has done anything to hamper the performance of our hostas beneath it. my two cents.
