Albert's Greenhouse

No matter where you live, there things that I can grow that you cannot. There are also things that you can grow which I cannot. Due to regulations, climate, or sometimes just popularity, there are some typical plants which grow quite well in the San Francisco Bay Area and which are the subject of some envy from our more northerly or inland neighbors. These would include our Orchid Cactus, our Camelia, our Palms, Striletzia and lastly our tree ferns. We are at the northenmost end of their viable range as a landscaping plant, and there seems to be basically only one fern we can actually grow for more than a few years: Dicksonia antarctica.

I grow one in a pot, though you find them in mildly sheltered areas in the ground all over the office parks of the Bay Area. I've had mine for about 10 years or so, and it's always lived in the same pot, and probably in the same soil, which has become about 90% fern root and 10% dirt. It's survived cold winters, drying out, and been down to a singly scrawn leaf more times than I really care to count. Beside my front door, it's finally found a happy place for at least the last two or three years.