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FOLIAGE GARDENS

Sue Olsen
2003 128th Ave. SE
Bellevue, WA 98005

2008

Hello friends and customers new and old and welcome to the 2008 catalog of ferns. As many of you know, I’ve been propagating ferns from spores for close to forty years now. I hope that from those selected over these years you’ll find plants for the pleasure, beauty and enrichment of your shade garden as well as enthusiasm for the shade garden experience - and ferns in particular. They do indeed add interest, variety, texture and unity to the garden and a well-placed grouping, miniature or giant, can offer the elegance of a “finishing touch”, feathery or bold and sometimes colorful, in the garden’s shady community. Basically they’re all a well-mannered, low maintenance lot!

Meanwhile, 2007 was a marvelous year, full of personal and professional highlights. My Encyclopedia of Garden Ferns with descriptions of almost 1000 ferns and 700 illustrations arrived in bookstores in March. The reviews have been very enthusiastic and humbly gratifying. (I was especially honored to have Britain’s BBC Gardens Illustrated list it as one of the top ten new releases of 2007.) To add to the delight, my children, Greg and Kris along with colleague Michelle Bundy hosted a most festive HFF celebratory gala here in July. Good cheer and camaraderie were abundant.

Travels, including a lecture and brief visit with gracious folks in Louisville, continue to delight. July featured a truly magnificent tour of outstanding British fern gardens including Highgrove, the estate of HRH Prince Charles. Fern specialist, host and good friend, Martin Rickard provided an absorbing two week treat for four enthusiastic American fernatics. It was a highlight of my year as was the ensuing HFF/BPS fern tour of Texas. Here I was especially pleased to see the challenging xeric ferns in situ as well as notably lovely public and private gardens.

The year ended on a high note with a family visit to my youngest daughter, Tami, her hubby and adorable and energetic twenty month old twin boys. She took us to Longwood Gardens where the boys took full advantage J of the water features in the Children’s Garden and we all marveled at the absolutely gorgeous and beautifully presented displays of holiday splendor.

And so now I welcome you to Foliage Gardens. I hope you enjoy your visit and I thank all of you for your business and friendships. I wish us all a happy, peaceful and rewarding year of great gardening and thriving ferns.

Fall Addenda

Fall is coming and with it new and old faithful fern offerings. Pre frost days of September and October are ideal for establishing new plantings that will be enjoyable in the fall and rewarding in the spring.

And speaking of spring, our April broke the all time record for COLD temperatures a trend that, accompanied by steady rains, continued until mid-June. The cold beheaded many of the 2008 catalog offerings that optimistically had expected April to be spring. Some recovered, albeit slowly, and others threw in their fronds by early June. I apologize for any disappointments…none more painful than my own!!!

I’m happy to note, however, that as a result of recent travels I have an exciting ready to share crop of interesting and unusual material, some of which is new to the trade. These are the Olympians of the fern world bringing from their homelands their special contributions whether woodlanders or xerics. Let the parade begin and cheer them on!

Catalog of Ferns