Tougher Than I Thought

A Stags Horn Fern growing quite happily in an unexpected place.

The Stags Horn Fern is a native to the warm, wet forests of the east coast. I have seen trees festooned with them in the warm damp air and dappled light of the coastal ranges as well as in the steamy glass houses at Kew. As a child I brought one as a pot plant which once removed from it perfect climate controlled glasshouse in Holland, it slowly turned yellow, went crispy around the edges and bit the dust. I suspect the central heating and lime scale in the water weren’t to it‘s liking. There also happens to be a rather fine specimen growing in the crux of a tree in the school yard opposite the orchard where I am pruning. The temperature in town was -7^oC the morning I took these photos and the Stags Horn Fern was growing quite happily out in the open. So it seems they are pretty tough after all.

As I like growing exotic plants back in the UK, it’s always interesting to see the limits to which exotic plants will tolerate and grow happily. Talk to any seasoned exotic plant enthusiast and you will find that ‘cold’ is not just ‘cold’. There is wet cold and dry cold, not to mention the duration. A few hours at -7^oC in the dry may not be as bad as a few days at -1^oC in the wet. Here the temperature regularly drops below freezing but never remains there for too long, and very little rain falls throughout the winter months. To try and coax one through a winter in the UK, it may have to tolerate many days of freezing and wet conditions. Finding the right micro climate is the key. I used to grow Echium pininana successfully through the winter planted close to a wall where the night storage heater was mounted on the inside. Enough heat made it through the wall to keep the worst of the frost away. If you can get this spectacular triennial plant from the Canary Islands through two winters it will produce towering cobalt blue spires of flowers. I suspect there will be very few gardens in England this year with Echiums in flower.

One of the largest Stags Horn Ferns I have seen growing in the frost free coastal town of Kerikeri in Northland, New Zealand.

So it seems most of this year in Australia will be spent in Stanthorpe. At leas I’ll get to see the seasonal changes of this part of the country, if not the whole country in little pieces. It seems the changes are quite subtle with the predominant vegetation being evergreen. The introduced tree species of the gardens and orchards give away the seasons.

Defiant of the cold is a large cactus tree standing rather incongruously amongst the bare apple trees.

My icy cherry picker and early rhyme frost. Fortunately at this latitude it soon warms up when the sun breaks the horizon.

Ingenious Bladderwort Trap

“What a wonderful and long-continued series of variations must have led up to the perfect ‘trap’ in Utricularia, while at any stage of the process the same end might have been gained by a little development of roots and leaves, as in 9999 plants out of 10.000!” Alfred Russel Wallace, from a letter to Charles Darwin dated  21st of July 1875.

Poly Tunnel Build

The many tender exotic plants which fill the borders of the Exotic Garden spend the fickle winters in a large poly-tunnel.  This video, filmed by Chris Ridley, captures its construction back in February 2012. With a bit of ingenuity the new tunnel was constructed over the old, smaller one then fit to burst at the the seams.