The western sword fern is to top fern of the Pacific Northwest. It may not be the most beautiful fern, but it is by far the most common and most noticed. We have had these ferns in the woodland garden and I moved one to the Douglas fir bed where it continues to thrive in the dry shade of a forest giant. Sporelings of these ferns pop up in pots, too, and so we have a few of them as patio plants.

Where happy, these ferns can create a dramatic, huge cicle of fronds. They are evergreen, but to keep them looking fresh most gardeners remove all the old fronds in late winter before the fiddleheads appear.

Indigenous people used this plant as a topical painkiller and they ate the rhizomes in tough times.

Note that this last photo is of a sword fern that we had in a hanging basket on the fence. It didn’t get watered enough and it turned brown. You can see that it isn’t dead, though, and next year it will leaft out per usual and look great again. These are tough plants!

My future plans for these are to mix some into the native plant garden and to keep some in pots on the back patio where they really thrive and keep things looking cool and easy.