Why I’ve ferns fallen for
Luxurious, regal, dramatic – ferns will light up any dark shady corner, says Monty Don – and now’s the time to plant them
THE clocks go back first thing tomorrow morning, and it always feels to me as though a plug has been pulled and the light slowly drains away until the New Year. But sometimes all things dark and gloomy can make a Gothic scene in the garden that has a beauty of its own.
As anyone with a shady, dry corner in their garden knows only too well, anything that is capable of thriving in low light and with poor nutrition is valuable, so step forward almost all ferns, for this is your hour.
I have come to love ferns over the past few years. To treat them as plants that fill a gap where little else will grow is to malign them. I love the way they add colour, texture and calm to even the darkest corner. There are ferns for almost every situation and I’m planting more and more, so I now grow them lining one of our major paths; as a large section of another border; around my pond, and in pots – and I have plans to expand my fern empire even further next year with tree ferns around the pond.
The Victorians also loved ferns, to such a great extent that they built dedicated ferneries that were either shady greenhouses – often sunken to keep them cool – or north-facing hollows with rock walls. But there’s no need to go to such elaborate lengths. Any shady part of the garden, either dry or damp, acidic or alkaline, will be a good home for some lovely ferns.
I have planted the male or buckler fern, Dryopteris filix-mas, all over my garden and it never looks less than regal sending up croziers 1m tall. It will grow almost anywhere, wet or dry, but is perhaps wasted in anything less than rather dry shade as it is one of the most resplendent of all plants for these tricky conditions. I have an especially tall variety, ‘Barnesii’, which is superb in a large pot or in a border. Its golden-green relative, Dryopteris affinis, is slightly more fancy, but certainly no less tough and I have planted the two types together to create a subtle but telling contrast. The lady ferns, or athyriums, such as the native A. filix-femina, originate from damp woodland and for their very feathery fronds to develop to their best they need some moisture in the soil. The shuttlecock fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, is another that’s happier in wetter conditions than most ferns. But given sufficient dampness it is easy to grow and truly dramatic, dying down to a brown knobbly stump in winter like a mini tree fern from which sprout fresh 1m-high fronds in spring. The soft shield fern, Polystichum setiferum, will grow luxuriantly in the corner of a dry, dark yard, untended and coming back year after year. The hard shield fern, Polystichum aculeatum, is a beautifully strong, pure form, reduced down to an almost elemental ferniness. It gets its ‘shield’ name from the shape of the spores under the leaves.
The spleenworts, aspleniums, with their seaweed-like flat fronds, come in many different sizes, from the tiny Asplenium trichomanes to the dramatic Asplenium scolopendrium ‘Crispum’ – superb plants for damp shade and very happy in very alkaline soil. I have them growing in the cracks of the lime mortar of a north-facing stone wall.
Whatever ferns you grow and wherever you grow them, do not mollycoddle them. They have evolved to cope with the toughest situations. Overfeeding will result in lush frond growth but weak roots, and as a result they’ll suffer badly in windy or dry conditions. Now is the ideal time to plant them, before their dormant phase, or you can wait until spring. Most ferns do not need any kind of fertiliser other than a mulch of leaf mould or, if grown in a container, a weak liquid seaweed solution every couple of weeks.