The Story of a Fern Garden—I 
Epwarp HALE CLARKSON 
In planning my fern garden I had rather ambitious 
ideas, especially as instead of being under fine old trees 
in a picturesque woodland valley with an inviting trout 
brook, this garden was to be in a city yard with a pro- 
saic rubber hose to furnish water. 
What I wanted was not merely a place where ferns 
would grow. For several years I had been studying 
the ferns in the woods, having in mind the eventual 
construction of this garden, and had learned to appre- 
ciate how effectively their beauty is brought out by 
appropriate surroundings. Therefore I had visions of 
green trees, and enticing paths bordered by clumps of 
mountain laurel and pungent sweet-pepper bushes, a 
place of restful leafy shade shut off as much as possible 
from all surrounding sights of civilization by a screen 
of shrubbery. And then, having prepared the setting, 
I would fill it in with the real ohecges Stes 
perhaps with a few of the choicest wild flow 
SELECTING THE LocaTion.—The place Steoved for 
the garden was the southerly half of a rectangular piece 
of lawn, the whole area being 120 by 90 feet. This 
was bordered on three sides by good-sized trees—spruce, 
sugar maple, red maple, several concolor firs, a pictur- 
esque clump of canoe birches, a white pine, and an old 
cherry tree—these trees not only making a very at- 
tractive frame for the garden, but also furnishing con- 
siderable shade and a first-class wind break. Along 
the easterly and southerly boundaries of this lawn ran 
a solid board fence nearly six feet high, which while 
admittedly not particularly ornamental was of real 
value in shutting out drying and destructive winds. 
The whole area sloped gently toward the north, thus 
insuring good drainage, and the soil was a good sandy 
loam. 
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