Fern Kingdom

The Ferns are making a comeback in my garden.

Practically my garden is totally green.

Green had started dominated all over again after I started gardening.
I guess its a guy thing - to consider foliage as an attraction
(Except for girls - flowers fall in their category,

but of course - we can beg to differ) 

Anyway, the Long Green Cascading Leaves speaks volume to me.
Shade of course and the canopy style when in the tropicals..
That is the feel of extended feel of layers and layers of greens..
Just I like it - calling it a garden.

I forgot to mention
That in the big picture - its actually a Vertical Garden
The whole mass is Orchids, 

followed by Bromeliads, Hoya, Dischidia and finally ferns filling in the blanks.

And that's how they made the come back.

They easily tuck in between the structure.
The root mass tightens and secure the whole Vertical Garden from collapsing,

especially from material where the whole thing could had rotten over the years.

And they do great keeping the equilibrium perfect.
Great shade from the sun for the orchids - regulate excess water off from them in case any plants are suffering from over-watering.
And if there is not enough water - these will show signs of withering and will comeback immediately after watering - sort of a visual warning.   

They are indeed beautiful, this one is leathery
Quite durable and intricate in its design.

One thing for sure - if they are totally ignored 

They can disappear.
I had lost few species - the sensitive ones

Not all of them are hardy.

Finally, this fall under the sensitive category:

The Maiden Hair Fern
They do well near a water resource area
Not too much water and not too dry - a right balance ensures a good success with this one.

Bleeding Hearts Vine / Trailing Bougainvillea/ Sapodilla Tree / Drawf Petticoat Fern

BLEEDING HEART VINE

Sometimes when a plant do so well all the time and then you realize that you had just taken it for granted. Bleeding heart Vine just do that..

They are so gorgeous that they last for months - just went you think that the 1st bloom is over the next one is already in line. And there are so many new sets that the whole thing is cascading with layers of whites & reds.

I had recently reset this plant - trimming and pruning all the sprouting branches.
They tend to be leggy and put out new shoots everywhere.
However you might want to see it - once they start blooming - it is just glorious.

TRAILING VARIEGATED BOUGAINVILLEA

My variegated bougainvillea is blooming well together with my bleeding hearts.
I guess it must be the weather thing - too hot and sudden rain causes these to bloom.



















Wandering Jew (Zebra Tradescantia)

My drain-side is layered with Wandering Jew (Zebra Tradescantia) and Petti-coat Fern.
I let it take root here as they seemed to like the cascading vertical effect.

I also manage to discover two different types of Zebra Tradescantias.
Hope to find more of these variegated species in my collection. (picture below)










SAPODILLA TREE

They also seemed to continuously blooming and fruiting at the same time.
Planning to harvest them by this weekend.
Picking them too late and the fruit falls off - over-ripe.
Picking them too early and the fruit never gets ripen (still immature)
So its a 50-50 chance thing on harvesting them.

Tropical Vertical Gardening Experiment

I got inspired by The Rainforest Garden in the idea of setting up a vertical landscape garden. It was a situation when you got lots of plants but lacking display space. (too many plants and too less of a garden space would create a messy, unkempt - jungle look in the garden)

And I was also in a situation where I got everything under the sun theme and I need to focus with working out to bring the impact that I often look for - sort of create an ambiance where you feel good whenever you are in the garden (kind-a-feeling)

Yep, the ferns have to go. Its either throw away or give away situation. They don't fix well in my theme coloured garden. And so, this was a great idea of display. The good thing about ferns is they can really take the abuse. They can be over watered (but not water-logged) and would survive without soil. As you can see - the whole thing is a root-ball mass which easily fit into container spaced compartments.

I had set this up during the Chinese New Year holidays - its about a week now and they are doing fine. My greatest concern is that the whole soil & root mass might just flop & drop when watering. The other challenge is watering - too much water loosen the root support, lack of water dries up the leaves. The Bird Nest Fern are enjoying their new location as they sprout out new leaflets.

I had added Jewel of Opar in the selection to give some colour in the green selection and they simply look pretty good in the collection. The plants that are in this collection:

a) Bird Nest Fern
b) Drawf Petticoat Fern
c) Fluffy Ruffle Fern
d) Basket Plant
e) Jewel of Opar
f) Wandering Jew (Green Tradescantia)
g) Zebra Tradescantia
i) Joyweed

The most challenging moment is hammering the nails to support the wooden frame. It took awhile for me to handle the issue (guess I'm not good in being a carpenter) The wooden frame is actually a fruit crate. I had stapled a layer of plastic sheet to hold the soil and placed small containers to hold the root-ball mass inside them.
Sometimes, it is an issue of trial & error. And I foresee that eventually some species in this collection might overwhelm other species and that others might slowly disappear.

Of course - at the end of the day, it looked nothing like what the Rainforest Gardener proposed.
(lol) Well, I guess - it happens when you work with your own style and ideas. I wanted to use coconut shells and husk but it happened to be during the holiday season and getting them from a sundry shop is going to be a long wait (you can get all the husk & the shell for free as they are thrown away at the end of the day)

I have managed to really reset my garden during the whole Chinese New Year holiday week . It was also the issue of doing & setting a pot at a time, telling myself not to overwhelm and get up set or panic in seeing the whole mess. Amazingly I marvelled that I did manage to do some clearing work - doing little by little and eventually made some visible progress.
(I will upload my overall garden picture later)

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Wishing a Prosperous & a Garden Full of Overwhelming Beauty

to all who celebrate this Chinese New Year!

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Ball of the Petticoat Fern

I got this one from my friend, who was clearing his garden and passed all his excess plants to me. Actually this one was huge and was placed in one pot, I had split them and placed them in several pots. After some time of giving plants to few friends and here and there, it was about time to re-plant the overgrown root (more roots then soil found in one pot)

Well for the record, this one is known as Drawf Petticoat Fern. (Nepthrolepis Cordifolia)It has the forked split fronds at the tips, more like a turkey tail shaped ferns.



The story goes that one day when I was digging this ferns and lo and behold I found lots & lots of this root balls, they are actually known as rhizome. I guess its a water storage for this plant. Also notice that there are fine little runners at the edges of this root balls. I guess it can be propagated using this tubers.

Its considered an invasive plant. In my point of view, what you would say when it was invasion took for centuries? Would you considered it as native, well that's the case here, no one knows whether they were foreign or local material. What can be said is that its so common here that "old world" gardeners will laugh if someone purchase this one and considered it an ornament.

It took me sometime to convince my mum and my mother in law that Boston Ferns do have ornamental value and often sold in supermakets and nurseries as garden plants. (since both of them weed out these ferns in their gardens)