On two earlier occasions I attempted to grow Sweetfern (Comptonia peregrina), but each time the pots were tiny and I’ve long acknowledged that I’m incapable of regularly watering and attending to plants without well developed roots. So, I gave up. I wanted sweetferns ever since I saw a colony on a mountain hike, but I can’t have everything.

Of course, until I saw that a long trusted grower offered them in a one gallon pot size. I didn’t expect the one that was delivered to be thirty inches tall, so I quickly ordered two more, along with two more waxy bells (Kirengeshoma koreana, also oversized) and a Wheel Tree (Trochodendron arailiodes) with a five dollar upgrade to a two gallon. I suspect this had been sitting around for a while since what I got was a bushy, four foot tall tree. What a deal.

But, back to the sweetferns that are not ferns at all, but deciduous shrubs. The foliage is aromatic, but that means little to me since I can’t smell anything. It’s unusual to see one in a garden, and it’s native. The larger root system easily survived my inattention, and now three are on their way to eventually forming small thickets. I’m a happy fern and non-fern gardener.

Arborvitae fern (Selaginella braunii) is also not a fern, though it could fool anyone. It’s a low spreading club moss native to Asia that is nearly evergreen in our mildest winters. It looks like a fern and works in the garden like a fern, but it’s a little out of the ordinary and it regularly stumps visitors trying to identify it.

So, I now grow dozens of real ferns, three sweetferns and a dozen or more arborvitae ferns that have been here for a few decades. No, I can’t grow one of everything, but I’m working on it.