Richie Steffen shares tips for creating a calming fern table

Earlier this year in the great “Before,” I decided my garden needed a fern table. What’s a fern table, you ask? Basically, it’s a forest tableau fabricated on bonsai principles, a (totally artificial) naturalist environment designed for, and completely reliant on, a gardener’s attention. It sounded like fun—high maintenance but fun, sort of like getting a botanical puppy.

I reached out to Richie Steffen, fern fanatic and experienced fern table instructor and asked for a demo. After months of shelter-in-place and work arounds, I finally got my tutorial last month. “The idea of a fern table is to capture a bit of a calming woodland to enjoy close up,” Steffen begins. Calm? I’m already nervous about how I’m going to keep a mixed planting in shallow soil alive. 

Read the entire story in the link below

GROW in The Seattle Times