My son Tim did his sandwich year at Blooms Nursery, and spent quite a lot of time with Alan Bloom. Alan was a wonderful old man, and we all thought he would live to be 100, but he did not quite make it, writes Pat Edwards.

He made a beautiful garden at Bressingham, where he grew herbaceous plants, many of which he had either bred or chosen himself, which were always good.

In fact it was Alan Bloom who saved a lot of herbaceous plants through the war, and he was responsible for introducing many of them after the hostilities.

When Tim came home from his time with Alan, he asked me if he could dig a well. I pointed him to the bottom of our garden, and he started to dig.

Eventually the well was dug, and then Tim planted the top with ferns, covered with a structure to shade them, which, I inherited and developed an interest.

Ferns are fascinating plants – many of them are hardy and will grow in any garden.

They are primitive plants that do not flower. Instead they have spores, usually on the underside of the fronds.

The Victorians loved ferns, and collected any freaks, or different types as well as the species.

One which Tim left me was a Victorian mutant called whiteside, with crimped fronds; it must have originated from the common asplenium from this country.

I planted an ordinary asplenium down the well also, and to my surprise it has produced another mutant, not at all like Whiteside, but with divided and stunted fronds.

Another one has doubled the end of a frond, so is on the way to making a double asplenium.

Some ferns are evergreen, so keep their fronds through the winter – others are deciduous, so are bare in the cold weather. All of them unfurl in the spring, in a fascinating way.

There are so many different types of fern, not all green, the Japanese painted fern is blue, and dryopteris erythrosora is a lovely copper colour when it first unfurls.

Polystichums or soft shield ferns are soft to touch, whereas the blechnums are hard and tough.

Some of the adiantums are so delicate that they can hardly bear to be touched at all.

One could make a garden of nothing but ferns, and it would be amazing and beautiful, just one more section of horticulture that could grab you.

By Pat Edwards