My faux mantel and ferns
Since I am a forest/woodlands kind of a person, I love Ferns.While I have never been able to manage to keep any actually alive in my home, they do quite well in my yard where I don’t even touch them. That might have something to do with it. I have really good soil here, so they get to be almost 2-3 feet tall in some shady parts of my yard. That is one of the benefits of having an older home, we have older, well-drained,loamy soil.
I have both Ostrich ferns, which is a typical Midwest garden Fern, and some Japanese painted Ferns, which have a pretty variegated leaf. I was going to add a few new varieties in my yard. I know there are a few lower-growing varieties that would look nice under some of my trees. These were nice because they were all divides from neighbors and family and were free! I am very big on plant sharing! Some of them are almost ready to be divided again.
I also have a bottle-hoarding problem. I have a mixture of vintage glass bottles and new ones with interesting shapes. The bigger ones had soap in them and I knew they would be perfect for flowers.
I love the touch of greenery they add against the white surface. I trimmed them to various heights, and tried to pick some younger and older ones to have different leaf sizes.
I thought they would be prettiest arranged largest to smallest. Even though the Japanese Ferns get slightly lost, they look nice in person.
I put the Japanese painted ferns in the middle and the Ostrich ferns on the outside.
They actually lasted almost a week until the got all wilty and crunchy looking.
I also recently did a display with Peonies, which looked really pretty too. They added a nice pop color against the white surfaces.
I think when you are stumped as to what to decorate your mantel with, plants are always a great idea, they bring instant life to a room!
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