A managed composite control can be directly (without intermediary hosting layers) hosted within an unmanaged hosting application. A managed control which can host managed composite controls is provided, the managed control being directly hostable within any unmanaged hosting control. An adapter (control) wraps the managed control content before the control content is moved into the unmanaged layer. Overloaded methods are provided that accept managed controls and manage communication between layers in such a way that instead of internal references expecting a user control, the internal references expect an object.