Green Acre: Fern-tastic Solution

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

WITH THE LEAVES hanging in on the trees, there’s still not much to be done around the garden—though it is a good time to march about and decide what did and did not do well and where and plan for next year.

The trick to making a garden work, said a recent column in the New York Times, is to find your sweet spot and work from there. Just locate the thing that you’re doing in your garden that brings you the most happiness and satisfaction.

For me, that’s easier said than done. My tiny garden is governed by the Kwanzan cherry,  which forms an ever higher, wider, denser umbrella over the entire space. 

We do get the most happiness and satisfaction when it blooms for a week or a day once a year, and then there’s the enjoyment of flowers falling on the river-stone path that wends between the borders, drifting and accumulating like pink snow. Until the pink turns to brown on its way to decay, which is not so pleasant. 

With ever-increasing shade, each year fewer and fewer perennial flowers bloom. I still have hope for the kiwi, which was a small highly fragrant shrub when it was planted five or six years ago, and is now a tall skinny tree which might—might—straggle into the sun and flower again in another year or so. I do not have much hope for the pittosporum, purchased for its intoxicating scent.  In its third year, it sits there. 

Early Fall is the best time to move them to a sunnier spot—but god knows where that is. Perhaps I should leave them be. Both are happy and green all year. I can always tie on fake flowers  and spritz perfume. Sigh.

Until the cherry tree fills out, there’s enough sun for some flowers: tulips, a weakly blooming rose, impatiens, the blessedly stalwart hydrangeas. Is that it? Yes. Then we have green season, which extends from June through kaput. 

Year after year I keep trying. Heading for the garden center with hope in my eyes that this time I’ll have a pretty something in view from the porch that will last more than a month. 

So ferns, I’m thinking. I am never frustrated by ferns. Neither am I overly excited, but the few I have do look sweet along the path and hanging over the pond like a frilly bridge. 

I should plant more this fall. Just give up and go into the woods. It might be . . . soothing. 

There’s enough variety in evergreen ferns to make it interesting: Holly Fern (Cyrtomium), Leatherleaf Fern (Rumohra adiantiformis), and the particularly hardy Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) are all evergreen, which not only makes a pleasant sight all year but gives an endless supply of filler for flower arrangements.* 

Don’t worry about not being able to plant bulbs in the same area: They’ll make their way up through the fern foliage. 

Keep in mind that not all ferns are evergreen, or even hardy enough to survive northern or mid-Atlantic winters. It would be lovely if Boston Ferns survived the cold, but they will not. These mainstays of hanging baskets go flumpsht at first frost, as will the delicately lacy asparagus ferns. (Both, however, can be wintered over indoors and trotted out again next spring. If you’re unsure, ask: Cultivating a good garden shop is a wise idea.*)

For a little variety, garden purveyor Terrain offers a collection of mushroom sculptures (and mushroom-themed creations for the mushroom aficionado, such as printed scarves) in ceramic and teak, both garden friendly. I quite like the idea of mushrooms for creating a forest floor. Though I suppose I could just grow them. 

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Meanwhile in the bird cage. Kamala is now the same size as her mom, Cooper, and dad, Goldie. She’s 2 months old with a gorgeous seafoam-blue belly with a green head and wings—just like her dad, with whom she has long and serious conversations when they’re not playing. This bonding is going on because Cooper is back in the coconut shell, currently sitting on three more eggs. Oh my.

WHAT are you going to do with all those birds, Mom? Baby yowled.

Well, sweetie, I said, with an evil smirk. Xmas is coming. 

* Visit the National Arboretum’s Fern Valley Native Plant collection, where wildflowers blossom amid the ferns from spring through frost and you can see the varieties of fern in action.