So, back to my garden and the newly emptied space. Inspired by the idea of planting pyrrosia with a fallen log or two (like this) my friend Susan had rounded up some nice pieces at Secret Garden Growers (where she works part-time), and lucky me she brought a couple over to my garden—with extra moss!
I played with the logs, plants I'd purchased, and metal—moving them around deciding what I liked.
I knew I wanted to work in a pair of pedestal/elevated dish-planter type structures and hoped to track down a couple of plough discs, but that was not to be.
Instead I went with flat platter-like surfaces and found...
...heavy terracotta dishes to plant up and sit on them. I thought thick terracotta would hold the moisture nicely but drain. Nope. There is no glaze but they held water for a ridiculous length of time, so I drilled holes. Two in the small dish and three in the larger. I might have to pull these if the weather gets bad and I didn't want to compromise their structure.
In went pyrrosia, Pyrrosia lingua 'Hiryu' (in the small dish)...
And Pyrrosia lingua 'Ogon Nishiki' with P. lingua 'Compacta' in the large. I also used a few pieces of black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens') I'd dug up in the area, along with Lonicera crassifolia.
These didn't go into the dish planters but I have to share a couple photos of the cool fronds of Athyrium niponicum 'Aubergine Lady', from Little Prince.
Cool right? These went into the ground, but don't show up in the coming photos, sadly.
Since I knew I'd be returning with more ferns, planting the ground layer was put on hold until I got back from my trip to Far Reaches at the end of August. This Pyrrosia sheareri is from that haul. Between the log and the metal tube is a small Pyrrosia linqua from Little Prince—they'll grow to be normal size eventually.
The tubes are held in place with rebar and are straight, at least for now. In some photos they look a little crooked, but the angles are deceiving.
Like here for instance.
Looking at this shot I realize I didn't mention the big beautiful fern to the right of the pedestals, that's Dryopteris cycadina.
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