Incorporating Hostas and Ferns in Your Garden Design

March 16, 2009

Gardening
If your garden has oodles of shade, you can still make it appear green and inviting using such shade loving plants as hostas and ferns. Both are wonderful ornamental foliage plants that add grace and charm to any garden area, including in pots on patios and decks.

Hostas and ferns can be best enhanced by appropriate placement of landscape garden garden elements such as statuary, or a stone bench, brick walk or birdbath nearby (also known as hardscape). Such elements make a nice contrast to the rich, lush and graceful greenery that both ferns and hostas provide?just visualize yourself relaxing on a hot summer?s day on a stone bench set in a cool, soothing and serene border filled with hostas and ferns!

Because shady areas generally retain much more moisture than sunnier garden spots, including a cobblestone, pebble or brick path is a good idea from the standpoint of keeping shoes and bare feet clean and dry. If your shade garden is under large trees that lend a woodland feel, you can also use a natural bark pathway. More formal gardens are best accentuated with brick or tiles, while cottage-type gardens are well suites to paths of pebbles or paving stones.

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Garden Tip...

It is so easy to mow the lawn with the light-running modern lawn-mower, that many fine lawns are injured by too frequent mowings. We should not follow any set time for mowing, but be governed by the growth of the grass and the weather. When hot weather approaches, the grass should be cut less often, for too close cutting will expose the roots, and if the weather be dry and hot for a considerable period, the grass as a consequence will wither prematurely.
~ James Sheehan
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To make your shade garden with ferns and hostas area especially appealing, add a water feature. A small fountain or waterfall is reminiscent of a mountain stream where these plants grow wild. You don?t have to spend a lot to get this effect: Even a small reflecting pool will do the trick quite nicely.

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Garden Tip...

Propagating Plants: Take a pan, or dish, at least three inches deep—the circumference of which may be as large as you wish, fill to within one half inch of the top with sand. The cuttings are to be inserted in the sand, which is made very wet, of the consistency of mud. The pan should then be placed on the window case, where it will receive the full light of the sun, which will not injure the cuttings in the least, providing the sand is kept constantly wet, being careful to never allow it to become dry for a moment, otherwise the plants will be lost.

Is there no drainage from the pan necessary? none, the atmosphere will evaporate the water fast enough to prevent any stagnation during the brief time required for the cuttings to take root.

Success in propagating in this way, depends altogether upon keeping the sand wet like mud until the cuttings in it are "struck" or rooted, and this may be easily determined—with the hand gently try to lift the cutting, you will know if it is rooted by the hold maintained on the sand, if not, it will come out. A little experience in feeling with the hand in this way, will enable you to readily determine whether the cutting is rooted or not.
~ James Sheehan
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Hostas and ferns also blend nicely with other shady spot plants that volunteer themselves naturally, such as mosses and lichens and can be beautifully set off by incorporating a few large rocks or boulders into your plantings.

To add visual diversity to your shade garden, be sure to include at least a few hostas with variegated foliage, preferably planted in front of the largest dark green ferns. The cream and gold colors of variegated foliage will accentuate both the hardscape elements and the solid green plants simultaneously.

To further complement your hostas and ferns, sprinkle a few early blooming woodland wildflowers such as crested irises and creeping phlox and some late bloomers like goldenrod and mountain anemones.

Shade gardens are tremendously rewarding to grow. Though preparing the soil and placing the hardscape elements can be time consuming, once these are in place garden is designed and planted, the hostas and ferns will continue providing a soothing visual with very little care.