Last week I mentioned my visit to the spring trials at Skagit Gardens in Mt. Vernon, Washington. Along with the fabulous new hellebores, marguerites, petunies, and coreopsis, they offered something that made me smile: Deer fern (Blechnum spicant), that superb evergreen native that graces woodland paths all over the Pacific Northwest.
“Discovering” it is kind of like “discovering” America: it’s been here all the time, and deserves all the praise anybody can heap on it. This plant is tidy, diminutive compared with most of our forest ferns, survives on rainfall alone after it’s established, and fits in as well with exotic plants as with wild ones, which is probably why Skagit is interested. (Many native plants have a reputation for looking a bit untamed around well-bred nursery plants.)
Grow this where it gets partial to full shade and regular water. If you plan to let it naturalize and live in the northern California or Pacific Northwest lowlands, plant it in rich forest duff, or at least soil that’s heavily amended with compost. The plant usually grows less than 24 in. high and wide, but clumps can get much bigger with time. Fronds come in two types: spreading sterile fronds that make up most of the clump, and narrow, upright fertile fronds that have a whole different look.
With just normal garden care, you can grow this in Sunset climate zones 2b-7, 14-19, and 24.
Deer fern also has some fascinating relatives, including two smallish, tender tree ferns that grow in Southern California—one from Fiji and one from South America—and a hardy low ground cover called Blechnum penna-marina (pictured below) that is at its best in mild parts of California, but which will also grow in protected spots west of the Cascades in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.
