Martin Rickard’s new book on ferns will be the one-stop volume for those with an interest in these very attractive garden plants and if your gardening interests are only now leaning towards ferns, you will find no better book to guide you on your way as it caters for the beginner and the experienced grower alike. The author’s own interest in ferns dates to the 1960s with membership of the British Pteridological Society; he later established his own successful fern nursery and was awarded Gold Medals in ten successive years for his exhibits at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. He has written extensively on ferns previously and this volume might well be considered the product of a lifetime’s interest and experience.
Fern growing was extraordinarily popular in Victorian Britain when the development of the Wardian case allowed them to be grown in the polluted atmosphere of the day. A new flush of interest in the past twenty years means they are nowadays widely grown once again; this time, thankfully, as trendy and popular outdoor garden plants. This recent interest has also led to a raft of new introductions and, as the author points out, there are many more beautiful and garden-worthy plants on the cusp of introduction as plant explorers to China, Japan, Taiwan, the Himalaya, Drakensberg Mountains and the Andes have found more and more interesting ferns suitable for cultivation in our conditions.
The earlier chapters in the book are both interesting and informative, an excellent introduction and overview of ferns for our gardens. The History of Ferns and Fern Growing is an appealing resume while Using Ferns in the Garden moves quickly to the very practical strength of this book, good advice for the reader with many and varied suggestions for growing ferns in the smallest to the largest of gardens. Choosing Ferns centres around selecting the plant which most suits the position and conditions of your garden and contains a listing of some two to three hundred with recommendations of those most likely to succeed. Propagation has such clear and encouraging instructions for growing your own ferns that one would certainly be tempted to give it a go. Thankfully, Fern Diseases and Pests is a reassuring chapter for these plants are generally trouble free. An A-Z of Ferns is the main body of the book, an alphabetic listing of species, varieties and their cultivars with background information and guidance for successful cultivation and it is very generously illustrated with photographs of plants in wild and garden settings. Appendices list place to buy ferns, gardens in which to see them and societies we might join – everything you would ever need to know!
The book has that very pleasant blend of presenting comprehensive information and guidance in a perfectly accessible and readable style. The enthusiast will not be disappointed while the beginner will be encouraged. Few authors fuse these difficult to accommodate requirements quite so successfully as Martin Rickard does in Ferns for a Cool Temperate Climate!
[Ferns for a Cool Temperate Climate, Martin Rickard, The Crowood Press, 2021, Hardback, 208 pages, £25, ISBN: 978-1-78500-890-0]
BOOK GIVAWAY: To enter, leave a comment below – it will require your email address (which won’t be used for anything else nor passed to anybody else). Two winners will be chosen and the Crowood Press will post on the books. Open to UK and Irish addresses only.
Closing date: Saturday 13th.
Check out The Crowood Press for more books. Twitter: https://twitter.com/crowoodpress
Great review.
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Looks like a great reference book for our students!
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Brilliant, would love a book about ferns as I have a garden full of them. Actually wouldn’t mind a garden only with ferns!
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Eva-Christine, I removed your email address so as not to have it appear in public. I can access it from the site already.
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Wow,what a great addition to the bookshelf. Love ferns and am growing and learning as I go along. This would be on my Christmas list for myself.
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I must get this book by Martin Richard to complement Sue Olsen & Richie Steffan’s one. One really cannot have enough different types of ferns in a garden. They’re the unsung heroes.
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Rickard not Richard.
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Kevin, I have spent five minutes re-reading my blog to find my typing error only to realise you were writing about your own!
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🙂
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Just discovering ferns in my garden and would love to have this as I develop my small collection … reminding me of damp woodland aromas in my native County Wexford that I am just revisiting after a two year absence.
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Angela, the draw has been made and you are a winner!
I’ll drop you an email for your postal address and will pass this on to the publishers who will post the book directly to you. I hope you enjoy it!
Paddy
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what an interesting book! My little fernery is a bit over-run with self-seeded Japanese Anemone but I persevere in removing them and hope that I will win out eventually! The ferns definitely look hapier when the invaders are removed!
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H ha! Lots of typos in my reply 🙂 Apologies – working on a poor connection
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This appears to be the ‘must have’ book on ferns for generations to come … congratulations to Martin Rickard, The Crowood Press and dear Paddy for bringing it to the attention of enthusiasts and beginners alike.
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Yes, a good one, Cliff!
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I’m a total beginner in the garden, just started over lockdown. Would love to include more ferns in my garden so this book would be incredibly useful!
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You’d enjoy it and find it very useful.
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A bibliophile’s bible.
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Better still – a gardener’s book!
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I love ferns and I am trying to learn how to tell them apart. Sounds like just the book for my new Japanese garden!
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Would so love this book!having moved to a cottage recently with alot of woodland,I would love to be able to plant with ferns for a natural look💚
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Looks like a really interesting and helpful book for a gardener like me, as I have only a couple of ferns in the garden and would like to include more and learn more about them. Thanks for the review Paddy.
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Absolutely adore ferns!!!
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I have a north west facing slope to my back garden and it would look wonderful with the addition of ferns. I have a few already and also invested in a couple of small tree ferns this year so would love this book as a reference point .From your great review Paddy it sounds like a wonderful book and just what I need to learn more about this fascinating plant group.
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This book is just what I need.I have a few ferns in my garden but I don’t know anything about growing conditions for ferns. I have shaded and also damp area’s in my garden where I would love to plant some ferns.
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Marie, the draw has been made and you are a winner!
I’ll drop you an email for your postal address and will pass this on to the publishers who will post the book directly to you. I hope you enjoy it!
Paddy
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Absolutely love ferns, I need this book on my shelf 😍
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Looks like a very useful and enjoyable read and reference . It’s wonderful that ferns have become so easily accessible to all ranges of gardeners now and their popularity seems to be increasing
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Looks like an amazing book.
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I’d love a copy of this for my Mom, she’s 87 and still an avid gardener. Ferns are one of her favourite plants having grown up in Kerry. She has the most amazing woodland garden in the West of Ireland.
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This new guide to Ferns would be a great addition to any gardeners library. I hope to add it to mine
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Thanks to everybody who entered the draw for a copy of Ferns for a Cool Temperate Climate by Martin Rickard. The two winners are Angela Dorman and Marie Kiely. I’ll contact both and ask the publishers to forward a copy of the book to each.
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Dear Paddy … I never win anything! I am very happy to be looking forward to receiving a copy of this book and developing my small collection of ferns … do I PM my address to you? Thank you so much, Angela
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I have just sent an email to you. Yes, I will need your address to send to the publishers, so any way which suits you. Hope you enjoy the book.
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It goes beyond all limits.
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