|
The Victorians knew one or two things about gardens & gardening, & no matter how much today’s gardeners think they have developed entirely original ways of regarding different aspects of gardening, for the most part they have been leaning heavily on the Victorian plant hunters, garden designers & horticulturalists. Subtropicals, glass houses, bedding, shrubs, grasses, perennials, parkland & produce all took huge strides forward in the late 19th Century & have all been revisited as the new flavour of the month in the recent past, but one type of plant for which our gardening ancestors created specialized habitats & valued highly was the sadly neglected fern.
The fernery was the centrepiece of many a Victorian country garden for which craftsmen built rocky outcrops & boggy pools. Aspect & microclimate were all considered & the maintenance regime was as well thought out as any rose garden. These days however, the humble fern is all but cast aside under a veritable stampede of modern garden styles & theories, so I feel duty bound to raise the profile of these adaptable & garden friendly plants. Once a year I have to lead students by the hand through a fern identification course &, as with them, I could regale you with words like bipinnatafid, rachis, & pinnulet (which do sound more like refugees from a Dr Who script than the language of fern identification). However to keep it simple I’ll walk you through the different conditions in which ferns flourish & the top fronds in each category. Most ferns like to be in full or partial shade, but some of the hardier species are more forgiving of a spot of sunbathing, however this can lead to a more stunted appearance. Dry microclimates, which include cracks in rocks & shady pots, are livened up no end with the addition of some fronds. The best ones to focus on are Asplenium scolopendrium (especially the cultivars Crispum & Golden Queen, Blechnum spicant & Adiantum pedatum, which can look quite superb in nooks & crannies on shady, north facing walls. Dry stone walls often have holes built into them that can accommodate a half litre size fern with some compost & they require little or no maintenance. In woodland you can use a multitude of ferns dependant on your ground conditions. At the boggy end of the spectrum the Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis) & Shuttlecock Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) grow large & verdant with their toes in the wet. Both are must haves but do need room to expand. My advice is to plant the Osmunda in clumps of two or three & the Matteuccia in swathes of seven to nine. Dry woodland is the natural environment of most ferns & the list of names to look for is a Linnaean scholars dream. Polypodium vulgare, Polypodium vulgare 'Cornubiense' (known as Polypodys), Polystichum setiferum (available in the following forms – Acutilobum, Divisilobum, Plumosodivisilobum & ‘Pulcherrimum Bevis’), Polystichum munitum, & Dryopteris filix-mas & filix-femina are all stunning ferns that display excellent form & good value when dotted around tree stumps & alongside woodland paths. Sitting squarely on my moral high ground I will tell you not to filtch specimens from natural sites as this sits right alongside bulb rustling in my book of horticultural no-nos. Currently there is a resurgence in one particular type of fern, even though the Victorians still used it first (though many garden makeover programmes might disagree) & this is the tree fern. The most common tree fern is Dicksonia antarctica, which is imported in large numbers from the Australasian continent. Purportedly, most tree ferns come from renewable sources or areas that are being cleared for construction but it does sometimes seem that there are more tree ferns in southern England than in all of Australia…. Ferns are an essential addition to the garden & very under rated, so before the next ‘new’ fashion rears its ugly head, get yourself into ferns & set a trend instead of following one. |
