How to Use Ferns in Your Garden Landscape

Ferns make excellent landscape plants because of their attractive fronds and their ability to thrive where many plants fail. You can plant them under shady trees, use them as border plants, grow them as ground covers or line garden pathways, and fill empty landscapes with low-maintenance ferns.

Most ferns are easy to maintain. They grow under fully or partially shaded parts of gardens where they benefit from moist but well-drained and loamy soil and moderate watering at regular intervals. When provided with these conditions ferns will produce abundance of lush fronds.

Ferns come in large and small sizes. Some are dwarf and some grow taller. Some form small clusters and some sprawl to cover the landscape. Depending on the size and layout of your garden, you can use ferns in your landscapes for many purposes. They can be used as companion plants with other flowering plants. You can use ferns to provide a lush-green background to your flower beds. You can also incorporate them in your landscapes as specimen plants grown in containers or hanging baskets.

Ferns in Garden Landscape

Here are a few examples of ferns beautifully used in garden landscapes.

 

Some of the ferns suitable for garden landscape include:

• Adiantum pedatum, Maidenhair fern
• Athyrium vidalii, Japanese lady fern
• Blechnum spicant, Deer Fern
• Cyrtomium falcatum, Japanese holly fern
• Dennstaedtia punctilobula, Hay-scented fern
• Dryopteris clintoniana, Clinton’s wood fern
• Dryopteris tokyoensis, Tokyo wood fern
• Matteuccia struthiopteris, Ostrich fern
• Cyrtomium Falcatum, Holly fern
• Nephrolepis exaltala, Boston fern