The return of FERN FEVER

In recent years, gardens across the UK have been gradually restoring and creating fern gardens and stumperies to spectacular effect,

- Rhiannon Batten

It's a cornucopia of greens, dappled sunlight percolating through the dense canopy overhead and spotlighting patches of bright matcha, velvety spinach and dazzling, peacock-feather fronds in various shades of lime. As a breeze tugs the jungly ferns around me into motion, walking around the stumpery here is like stepping into an artist’s impression of a prehistoric landscape. I've visited The Newt several times before, but I've never explored this corner of the Somerset garden attraction and it’s a revelation. Drawn deeper into it along ribbon-like paths, I come out at a circular hollow where one huge stump has been turned on its head, forming a sculptural round table. The sound of water rushes from a nearby waterfall and a woodpecker drills sporadically a few feet away. The effect is otherworldly. ‘On a warm summer's day this area is wonderful,’ says Andy Lewis, the Newt's head of ornamentals. ‘You can escape other visitors and find a moment of peace. It feels completely different; less formal than a lot of the site. The stumps have these nooks and pockets where water and leaf mould collect. You can plant in those; it’s a lovely damp environment.’

The Newt is one of several gardens that have quietly been reimagining ferneries and stumperies for modern audiences, as a second wave of fern fever washes across the UK. The first took place in Victorian times, when pteridomania – as Charles Kingsley christened it in his 1855 book, Glaucus; or, The Wonders of the Shore – swept the country.