Athyrium x 'Ghost'
Ghost Fern
- Type
- Fern
- Hardiness
- USDA Zones 3–8
- Sun
- Part Shade, Full Shade
- Soil
- Moist, Well-drained
- Mature size
- Height 24–36 Inches · Spread 18–24 Inches
- Growth rate
- Moderate
- Seasonality
- Dies back
This variety is no actively in production in our propagation house and may not return to our catalogue. We maintain this page purely for reference and archival purposes. If you would like to grow this plant, tell us. Your interest helps guide what we bring back.
For a larger installation or commercial project, write hello@woodlanders.net.
Tall, upright, and luminous, the ghost fern brings a column of silvery light to the shade garden. Athyrium x 'Ghost' is a chance hybrid between the southern lady fern and the Japanese painted fern, found in Nancy Swell's Richmond, Virginia garden, taking the best of both parents: the upright, vase-shaped stature of the lady fern and the frosted, silver-green coloring of the painted fern, held on dark burgundy stems.
Standing two to three feet, taller and more vertical than most colored ferns, the ghost fern glows a pale, frosted silver-green that seems to hover in dim light. A hardy, vigorous, deciduous fern, easy in shade or part shade and rich, moist soil, and the holder of the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Use the ghost fern as an upright accent or a repeated silver thread through a shaded border, beautiful against darker foliage, blue hostas, and the burgundy of heucheras. The pale fronds light the back of a shade planting where lower ferns would disappear, and deer pass them by.
None; a fern, reproducing by spores