Unseasonal greenery in the fernery

Normally by this time most of our ferns have died back and are crying out to be tidied but this year the greenery appears to have decided to hang on until the last minute.

At the beginning of this week the fernery bed looked like this.

There was still lots of greenery but last year's growth was dying back and in some smaller more delicate specimens had died back completely. I thought that I had better cut off the old fronds before the new growth started to appear and mingle with the dying fronds. It's much easier to cut back ferns without the fear of removing new growth along with the old.

As well as in the fernery we have ferns dotted around the garden and so I ended up with a couple of compost bags full of debris.

I couldn't have left things much longer as some of the plants already were sporting new growth.

It won't be long before the new growth or croziers begin to spring up. At the moment there are just some vague signs of activity in the centre of some plants.

Not quite at the stage where they remind me of sleeping tarantulas.

The fernery now looks like this.

I also trimmed the passion flower - in fact I was very tempted to cut it back more harshly - any advice on whether I should do this? As it was the passion flower shoots were emerging in between the ferns and had to be pulled out.

One problem when cutting back the ferns is that it exposes the black box containing all the electrics for the pond. Happily this will soon be hidden again.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett