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The best ferns for your garden
Offering beautiful foliage shape and texture, ferns are easy to grow. Here Matthew Reese chooses the best ferns for your garden.
Words Matthew Reese, photographs Jason Ingram
Ferns work well in many different garden settings but are the perfect solution for a shady garden. Few perennials have such a distinctive and instantly recognisable form as ferns, despite their huge variation in appearance and size.
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The conditions under which ferns will flourish is also quite variable. Hart’s tongues or Asplenium scolopendrium, for example, often find their way from the flower border to gaps in walls and paving, and are tolerant of deep, dry shade, while the beautiful Osmunda regalis will thrive in wet conditions (even with its feet in water) and will make strong colonies of fronds more than 1.2m tall.
Another narrow-fronded fern mutation but much more substantial and robust than the Athyrium. It can take sunshine with enough moisture but is best grown in shade on humus-rich soils.
A substantial fern with matt, softly textured and slightly limp, mid-green pinnae held on arching fronds. Will tolerate some dryness once established. Best in dappled shade.
When grown well this fern’s foliage has large, green, palmate fronds peppered in striking sori (spore capsules). Needs moist, rich soil and part shade.
An evergreen fern collected in northeast Himalaya. Initially thought to be tender, it has now survived three winters in the stumpery. Long ascending fronds are lustrous on the upper surface and glaucous underneath.
Cristate form of hart’s tongue fern with delightfully unruly foliage that catches the light on shiny, crumpled fronds. Once established will tolerate some drought.
A clump-forming fern with lovely, soft, broad fronds, the new croziers are particularly hairy, and the overall effect is a flatter congregation of fronds than most other ferns.
