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Award Winning Shade Garden Perennial |
By:
Douglas Green |
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The 2004 Perennial Plant of the Year was Athyrium niponicum
'Pictum' or Japanese Painted Fern and this plant deserves to be
in all shade gardens.
This hardy fern grows twelve to eighteen inches tall and slowly
multiplies to form a large clump twenty four inches across. The
fronds are approximately eighteen inches long and are a
soft-grey metallic colour with hints of red and blue. The centre
stem is red so the contrast is excellent. It is a lovely plant
preferring partial shade rather than deep shade. It does best
with regular watering rather than dry soils. The Japanese
painted fern is native to Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan and
once you see it unfurling its metallic grey frond in early
spring, you'll be a convert and want a bit of the oriental
influence in your garden. This fern colouring lends itself to
being an excellent contrast plant to other shade perennials such
as Hosta and the new gold coloured Carex 'Lemon Zest'. Mature
plants can be divided every three to four years to provide extra
plants for zealous gardeners.
There are several new varieties of Japanese painted fern that
you might want to search for at your favourite garden centre.
'Pewter Lace' has metallic pewter to mint-green fronds (two
toned) with red stems and extremely lacy foliage. I saw this
plant last year and I can tell you it will wind up in one of my
garden containers this spring to fill a contrast plant role. The
second new introduction is 'Ursula's Red' and this variety has
large silver leaves but the centre of each leaf is flushed with
wine-red colour in the spring. It is a gorgeous fern.
When you add the award-winning 'Pictum' to the garden mix, you
have an difficult choice to make. Which one to grow?
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Article Source: http://www.friendsofvista.org/articles/article28207.html |
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