Ferns are so adaptable
Ferns, here, are a winner. I like them, they like me, and my mission is to scour every nursery I visit for less usual, preferably evergreen varieties. Asplenium species and Cyrtomium fortunei do well and I also like small, unassuming hard fern, Blechnum spicant. This year the search for new acquisitions has yielded soft, grey-green Cheilanthes lanosa, which keeps its leaves but which will prefer some sun, together with spiky semi-evergreen Dryopteris filixmas ‘Linearis Polydactyla’. And while Dryopteris erythrosora is deciduous, it’ll produce new foliage that’s orange-copper in tone, which will lift the other dark greens nicely.