Retro Garden

Nothing can be prettier than to see a stand of ferns in the parlor or sitting-room through the winter. Their freshness, amid winter snow and desolation, is gratifying to the eye, and the richness of their growth well repays the little care and attention which they demand.

Our lady friends should gather pretty, delicate specimens during the summer, and get them nicely started before cold weather. The best way to keep them through the winter is under a bell-glass.

Take a young plant, with one or two delicate sprays. Find a pan of some kind, which will look presentable in a sitting-room, then get a little peat-soil and silver sand, and a few crocks or broken clinkers. Put these last in the bottom, not to do their usual work-for there need be no drainage from the pan-but simply to form a receptacle into which the surplus water may fall from direct contact with the roots.

Plant the specimen in the centre, raising the soil towards that point, and making it a little rough with a few bits of sandstone, &c.; put on the glass, and the thing is done.

The result will be one of the most beautiful objects ever seen in the garden or in wild. Every tip of the finely divided frond will have its little perl of dew, and when this ceases to be the case it is time to water again-a labor of once in six months or less. These filmy ferns, that naturally grow in still and very moist places, are, above all others, those most suitable to indoor cultivation, no ventilation, no complication of any kind being necessary.

Ferns for the House is an adaptation of a small article that appeared in Arthur’s Home Magazine in 1868. The photograph of the Victorian lady gathering fern specimens is from the 1899 edition of How To Know The Ferns, by Frances Theodora Parsons. The bell jar illustration is from Window Gardening, Edited by Henry T. Williams, 1881.