I'm nuts about ferns as they are so frilly and have such a fab green colour. I love watching fern fronds unfurl in Spring. And because I love ferns so much I decided to make a stumpery in a shady part of the Bliss garden.
For a stumpery you need, no surprises there, stumps and quite a lot of them. But where to do you get your hot little hands on them? Fortunately, as we are now in the process of removing the horrendously ugly Leylandii hedge that has been a visual pest from day one, I have a plethora of stumps.
This is 5 meter of bug ugly hedge bordering the front garden.
And this is what it looks like now that the first 5 meters are gone. Only 25 meters more to do. Argh! As you can see the Leylandii hedge is/was both ugly and ginormous. There is so much more space in my front garden now that the hedge is gone. But enough hedging, lets return to the latest addition to the Bliss garden: the stumpery.
To create a stumpery you dig a big but shallow hole in the ground. Bung some tree stumps in, preferably in an artistic way, fill up the holes inbetween with 50% soil and 50 % leafmold. Plant ferns in the holes and stand back to admire the view.
In time the stumps will rot away but before that they will provide lots of insects, toads and hedgehogs with much needed shelter and not only that, but they offer ferns a wonderful place to grow in and provide such a nice setting too. Apart from ferns I've also bunged in some Lilies-of-the-Valley, blueberry shrubs and a hazelnut tree. More will follow such as snowdrops, primroses, foxgloves, hydrangeas etc.
Not bad eh, that I've turned a bunch of ugly stumps from a most revoltingly ugly hedge into a thing of beauty.
It's a thing, a Bliss thing!
copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen
