Staghorn Fern Wall
Hello! This post is for my fellow plant lovers out there. I love gardening and growing food, but I also love to have a lot of house plants. I grew up with my mom keeping plants in our house, and I got the bug from her. I feel like a living plant really enhances the environment in a room and I always include them in my designs. One of my favorite features in our house is our wall of staghorn ferns. I have been growing these plants for years and they can be pretty tricky, but also rewarding. They are more of a high maintenance plant and often more expensive. A lot of trial and error has led me to some success with these ferns, so I thought someone else might also benefit from what I learned.
Staghorn ferns like indirect light, moderate moisture and frequent fertilizing. The fronds can burn if they get direct sunlight. These plants are epiphytes, meaning that they grow on the branches of other plants, but they do not feed off their host plant. Staghorn ferns get their nourishment from the air, rain and natural materials that fall into its leaves and decompose. Our ferns are mounted on cedar boards so that we are able to hang them on the wall and create kind of an art installation with them. We have them hanging over our family room fireplace on a white, brick wall.
This is our staghorn fern collection.
Some basic info about these plants: staghorn ferns are named due to the antler like shape of their frond leaves. These plants have two types of leaves, one is the frond that grows out from the base, and the other is a shield leaf which grows flat around the root ball. The fronds stay green and can grow in different directions. The shield leaves grow to different sizes, overlap each other and eventually turn brown and papery with age. Typically, these ferns grow outdoors, in warm climates. I saw some awesomely huge ones growing off of people’s trees in their front yards when we visited Florida! (I had to stop myself from going into their yards to get a closer look). When grown indoors, the ferns are usually mounted on boards or grown in baskets.
Here you can see the different leaves that grow on this plant. The brown shield leaves are the older leaves the small green one is a new leaf growing.
As I mentioned, staghorn fern care can be tricky because they are picky about light, temperature, and moisture. I started with our first plant when we lived in Chattanooga, TN almost 5 years ago. It is very large and I paid $75.00 for it. My husband thought I was crazy! We named it Fernie the Fern (because I am a big dork who likes to name my plants). This fern came mounted in a wooden palette. We installed a hanger on the back and hung it on our living room wall, in the palette. We moved Fernie to Iowa with us 3.5 years ago, in the middle of a December snow storm. It ended up going in an area with less light than it was used to. When spring came, I left it outside in the sun and almost killed it. After panicking, I started researching and realized my missteps. I am so happy that Fernie is recovering and starting to look it did when I first got it. The transition to a different climate, and changes I needed to make in caring for it, have taken some time to figure out.
When we found and moved into our current house, I knew that I wanted to get more staghorns ferns and create a feature wall. We decided to remove Fernie from the palette and remount it on a cedar board. We chose cedar boards because they hold up to water and dampness and do not need to be sealed. The oils in cedar protect the wood against decay and do not give off anything that is harmful to other plants. As a bonus, cedar also smells great when it gets wet! Staghorn ferns like to be occasionally soaked and misted often, but they need to dry out between watering. This means that you have to be able to move them to an area where you can soak them and use materials that are not effected by water.
This is how Fernie looks now. You can tell how large it is by the size of the shield leaves. There were originally twice as many fronds and they were larger.
Staghorn ferns have a very shallow root system, and do not need to be planted in soil. This makes them a perfect plant for mounting. The downside is that they have to be remounted from time to time, as they grow, and as the mounting twine breaks down. Mounting them can make a mess, and be a little tedious, but I like doing it. I am going to share the way that I mount them.
Other than Fernie, the other plants I have came in a normal pot with soil. The ferns can grow this way, but do not require soil. Instead of soil, I surround the root ball of the plant with terrarium moss. Terrarium moss stays soft, has a nice color and helps to hold moisture while still being breathable. It is also chemical and dye free.
This is what the root system of the plant looks like. As you can see, it is very shallow and sort of flat. I remove the plant from the pot and brush off the excess soil. Some soil may stay in the root ball and that is no problem.
I use fishing line to secure the plants to the cedar boards and follow that with natural twine. We used some screws around where the plant goes on the board for wrapping the fishing line and twine around. Since staghorn ferns naturally get nutrients from other plant materials that fall into its leaves and decompose, I use banana peels to feed our ferns. I start by placing some moss on the board, and then layer some banana peels over that before placing the fern on top. Then I surround the rest of the root system with moss so that it is covered. I start with tying the fishing line to one of the screws. Then I pull it across the base of the plant, wrapping it around each screw, as I work my way around the plant.
The fishing line is very strong and does not stretch easily. This is what really holds the plant to the board, but I am very careful to get it under the shield leaves. if you go over the shield leaves with the fishing line it may cut or damage the leaves. Since the fishing line is almost invisible, I follow it up with some natural twine. The twine does stretch and break over time, so it is mostly decorative.
This is how it looks once the fishing line and twine have been completed. This plant is now ready to be hung. We used picture wire on the back of the boards for hanging.
Depending on the season, I usually soak and feed our ferns every two weeks. Some of the fronds will start to droop slightly, letting me know it time for feeding and soaking. I dice banana peels and stick then into the moss and under the shield leaves of the plant. I place the board with the fern into our kitchen sink to give them a good soak. Some people use a bathtub for soaking. In warm months, you can take them outside to soak and dry, but be careful to put them in a shaded area.
Even though staghorn ferns prefer partial shade and bright, indirect light, the room we have our ferns in is kind of dark. I noticed that the ferns were not doing as well as I was hoping, so we installed a grow light above them that adds some additional soft, indirect light. This has made a big improvement to the plants being healthy. We get excited with each new leaf and now my husband likes these plants as much as I do!
This is our family room wall with the ferns over the fireplace. As you can see, they each grow differently and create different shapes. The purple light is the grow light.
Do you love these plants? Let me know in the comments if you have had any successes or failures with staghorn ferns and share a picture. I hope this information is useful. Thanks for following along!
