Yesterday's story of the oak fern

Yesterday, we drove up to Green Lake Fish Hatchery and into the canopied area full of fish pools, full of fish. After a feeding demonstration we got to work.

You see, we got a message from NGBH enthusiast, Fred Yost (he supplied us with seedling birch trees earlier this spring, dug from his yard and now doing so well in our nursery on site).

This time, he had northern oak fern!! (Gymnocarpium dryopteris) We’ve been dreaming about oak fern, so elusive in the forest, impossible to find in the nursery trade, and there it was, in the way, at the fish hatchery where Fred works.

So we drove up before anyone would dare to weed it out of the way and carefully, lovingly, dug it out of the gravel, drove straight to Bagaduce Music Lending Library and stuffed them all into open spaces in an old garden bed.

This oak fern will be our stock as we build our native garden.

THANK YOU!

Fred and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service