Self-confessed pteridomaniac Alice Vincent has long been fascinated by ferns and has grown to love the serene, green beauty they bring to the garden. <\/p>
I remember the first time I walked into the RHS Lindley Library. It was cold, so it must have been winter<\/a>, and the trees of London\u2019s Vincent Square were playing with the light through the building\u2019s tall windows. I felt woefully out of place walking over that beautiful mosaic floor, but the librarians just smiled and nodded towards the entrance.\u00a0<\/p> You may also like<\/strong><\/p> I was there to look for a particular book \u2013 Sarah Whittingham\u2019s\u00a0Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania<\/em>. And there it was on a shelf, neatly filed with its Dewey system sticker. I was researching my own book at the time, looking at how different generations came to find their own way to plants, while exploring my own nascent fascination with them. I was done with Whittingham\u2019s excellent book within a few days, but I returned to Vincent Square to research and then write in the months that followed. Fast-forward a few years and a copy of my own book appeared in the Lindley Library, back where it began. <\/p> I was undergoing my own ferny fascination<\/p><\/blockquote> I wanted to find out \u2013 and write \u2013 about pteridomania, the Victorian craze for ferns<\/a> that saw them embroidered on to dresses and printed on to cushions, painted on ceramics and meticulously etched into custard cream biscuits (they\u2019re still there, those little curlicues). I was undergoing my own ferny fascination. I wasn\u2019t rampaging around the country with a little trowel and a collection box, as did so many middle-class women in the 19th century, destroying swathes of biodiversity in the process, but I did fill my balcony<\/a> with them. One late summer day, I even got the delicate leaves of a maidenhair fern (Adiantum raddianum<\/em>) inked on to the inside of my bicep.\u00a0<\/p> That was seven years ago and I\u2019ve still no regrets \u2013 about the tattoo or becoming a pteridophile. The\u00a0adiantums\u00a0live in the garden now;\u00a0A. venustum<\/em>\u00a0is a resilient little thing, pushing on through the seasons. The affectionately named, formerly indoor, Princess Maidenhair Fern V (the numeral should tell you how tricky they are to keep alive in British homes) finally succumbed to life outdoors and its pot now houses foxglove<\/a> seedlings. Those ferns that filled my balcony now stand by my back door, still in the same containers. They\u2019ve been divided endlessly and scattered around.\u00a0<\/p> After a dismal, mollusc-filled summer, I realised I\u2019d overlooked the most crucial part of making a garden: growing your favourite plants<\/p><\/blockquote> It took me a while to accept that happiness lay in simply putting more ferns in the garden. When we moved from our flat to a house, I devoured the plant catalogues, and tried growing dozens of things I hadn\u2019t previously had the space for, and had coveted on other gardeners\u2019 Instagram accounts. A kind of existential, dahlia<\/a>-filled crisis ensued. After a dismal, mollusc-filled summer, I realised I\u2019d overlooked the most crucial part of making a garden: growing your favourite plants.\u00a0So I ordered a lucky-dip box of five different ferns from peat-free grower Penlan Perennials<\/a>, and set about planting them. They thrived, filling up and fronding out and helping to create the calming layers of green texture and movement that I cherish most in a garden. <\/p> Admittedly, February<\/a> isn\u2019t the ideal time to do much to ferns. I only grow hardy types, and if they\u2019re deciduous, their nascent beauty is still tucked beneath rusting fronds. We must wait for May<\/a>, when new fiddleheads appear from the fluffy, brown casings at the crown of the plant. It is one of my most-loved gardening moments of the year. When we landscaped last year, I saved the ferns, not fully knowing where they would end up. But once the dust had settled, I realised we\u2019d unintentionally made space for them in a light-dappled corner by the studio. Here, I began to plant all the divisions and previously potted things. Finally, a fernery of my own.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Self-confessed pteridomaniac Alice Vincent has long been fascinated by ferns and has grown to love the serene, green beauty they bring to the garden. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":32409,"template":"","categories":[1,17],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"4"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2024\/02\/im-a-closet-pteridomaniac-and-im-ready-to-talk-about-it.jpg",2560,1341,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2024\/02\/im-a-closet-pteridomaniac-and-im-ready-to-talk-about-it-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2024\/02\/im-a-closet-pteridomaniac-and-im-ready-to-talk-about-it-300x157.jpg",300,157,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2024\/02\/im-a-closet-pteridomaniac-and-im-ready-to-talk-about-it-768x402.jpg",768,402,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2024\/02\/im-a-closet-pteridomaniac-and-im-ready-to-talk-about-it-1024x536.jpg",800,419,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2024\/02\/im-a-closet-pteridomaniac-and-im-ready-to-talk-about-it-1536x805.jpg",1536,805,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2024\/02\/im-a-closet-pteridomaniac-and-im-ready-to-talk-about-it-2048x1073.jpg",2048,1073,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Self-confessed pteridomaniac Alice Vincent has long been fascinated by ferns and has grown to love the serene, green beauty they bring to the garden.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/32408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}You might also like<\/h4>
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