We recently bought five unusual ferns to plant in the Nut Walk and they arrived this week, much to our excitement. Billed to grow over up to 2 metres tall and just under a metre wide, we think the ferns, Woodwardia radicans) will look gorgeous beside the bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora). Commonly called the European chain fern, it purportedly colonizes when plantlets form at the tip of the fronds and take root.
In five litre pots, they were substantial in size and the few fronds each plant had were suggestively long, but head gardener announced he was going to chop them off before planting them.
In this video he explains why removing the old ferns benefits the crosiers – the as yet unfurled new fronds.
