This weekend, I decided to use the woodland ferns in my shade garden for a little updated art to flank the mantel. This framed woodland ferns project is an easy weekend DIY that anyone can do and the end result is one-of-a-kind botanical art with meaning.
My aunt dug up a few of these ferns from my grandparents’ home when it was sold many years ago. My aunt says that my grandfather transplanted the ferns from the local woodland to his flower garden back in the early 1900’s. The photo above is one I took in the woods on the property where I grew up. This was about a mile from where my grandparents lived. I think these ferns are very common here in Pennsylvania.
Several years ago when my aunt heard I was planting a perennial garden, she was happy to share some plants from her own garden. Among those plants were these ferns. The ferns have grown and spread like crazy and I love them.
So, back to the art project. . . I cut some of the fern fronds in different sizes and pressed them between the pages of a large and heavy book and then stacked more books on top. I left them there for about a week. I have seen beautiful botanical fern prints with latin inscriptions, but I wanted to add something more personal to mine. I found this little verse on the internet and decided it was perfect for one of the prints –
“Oh then most gracefully they wave In the forest, like a sea, And dear as they are beautiful Are these fern leaves to me”.
I recreated this saying in Word at the bottom right corner of an 8 1/2″ x 11″ page and printed it out on white cardstock.
For the second print, I added some personal information about the origins of the ferns.
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