Fern up your shade

When environmental factors such as too much shade limit the success of flowering plants, opt for tough ferns and remember that green is a colour too!

- Anna Celliers

The delicate appearance of most fern types with their variety of frond shapes and shades can be very deceptive. They can be unbelievably resilient and tough.

These vascular plants, which reproduce by means of spores and not flowers and seeds, have been around for millions of years. They grow in a wide variety of habitats ranging from high mountains, dense forests, dry desert rock faces, bodies of water and open fields. The fact that they can be terrestrial, aquatic, or epiphytic is a further indication of their vast scope of habitat.

We introduce you to a few tough ferns which will do very well in the shade of trees and large shrubs in the garden where other plants battle to grow.

Growing your ferns

• The right spot can have a little gentle sunlight in the morning, but should be mostly shaded and protected during the day.

• Dig over the soil to about 30cm deep and work in lots of organic matter like leaf mould, compost and palm peat. Also add a generous dusting of bone meal to strengthen the shallow-rooting rhizomes.

• If you can lay your hands on wellrotted pine needles, add it too, or mix in milled bark chips, as ferns like acidic soil.

• The ideal is to create a rich, but light and well-draining medium – ferns love moist soil and not heavy waterlogged soil.

Mother fern

Asplenium bulbiferum is also called the hen-andchicken fern, as this robust fern’s fronds resembling carrot leaves and sometimes features little plantlets (bulbils) at the edges of each frond. Where they fall, they root. This fern from New Zealand is semi-deciduous and can tolerate short dry periods. Size 120cm x 90cm.