Fall is a great time to dress up your garden

By Norman Bezona

The weather is cooling down and it is a perfect time to dress up your garden. If you are getting tired of the same old common plants in your garden, why not try something different? Maybe you can even specialize. There are fantastic numbers of plant materials to choose from, but we seem to get in a rut with whatever we can “cockroach” from our neighbors. This year’s Kona Outdoor Circle plant sale on Saturday at the Old Kona Airport Park will offer new plants galore. The 33rd annual sale will be from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Thanks to palm lovers like the Hawaii Island Chapter of the International Palm Society, hundreds of new species are growing in Hawaii. Many of these are native habitat so Hawaii is kind of a Noah’s Ark for palms. Of course, native Pritchardias will also be available at the plant sale.

Ferns are a good example of a whole family of plants very poorly represented in our gardens. It’s not that they can’t be grown, but that we don’t. They require very little fertilizer but do require moisture and shade from intense sunlight. Cooler mauka areas are probably the best for growing ferns, but many types may be grown almost anywhere with protection.

We have hundreds of ferns native and introduced to Hawaii, but this is just a fraction of the more than 9,000 species found throughout the world.