Dry shade and damp shade look identical on a garden plan. Both are simply marked "shade". At root level, though, they behave like two different climates. Plant a shuttlecock fern in the dusty strip under a beech hedge and it will sulk, brown at the edges and quietly shrink. Plant a holly fern in the boggy corner behind a downpipe and its roots will rot before the fronds ever look settled. Every fern below is reliably hardy in Britain. What separates them is how much moisture they want around their crowns and roots.

Get the match right and ferns are among the most rewarding plants in a British garden. A single crown of golden male fern, left undisturbed for a decade, will swell into a metre-wide fountain that looks good in February and better in July. Get it wrong and you will spend three summers watering, mulching and fretting over something that was never going to settle. The difference is rarely the fern. It is almost always the soil.

Work Out Which Shade You Have

Shade is a measurement of light. Water is what decides whether a fern thrives or fades. Most dry shade in British gardens comes from two things: the rain shadow of a wall, hedge or building, and the thirst of mature trees and shrubs. Damp shade usually sits on heavy clay, at the bottom of a slope, under a dripping gutter, or on ground that never quite dries out after winter.

There is also a third, trickier condition: ground that is sodden from November to April and bone dry by August. That is not true damp shade, and most of the lush ferns sold for wet corners will struggle there. Spend ten minutes reading the soil before you buy anything.

1. Dig a test hole one spade deep and about 30cm wide. Dry-shade soil is often pale, dusty and threaded with fine tree roots. Damp-shade soil is dark, cool and smells earthy.
2. Squeeze a handful. If it crumbles and will not hold together, treat the spot as dry. If it holds a ball and feels genuinely damp rather than merely cold, treat it as damp.
3. Watch it after heavy rain. If water is still sitting on the surface the next morning, you have a wet spot that needs drainage rather than a moist one.
4. Look at what already grows. Nettles, goosegrass and moss point to soil that holds moisture. Ivy, ground elder and bare, root-matted earth usually mean dry.
5. Check the tree roots. If you cannot push a trowel in without hitting a mat of fine roots, you are gardening in a sponge that somebody else is squeezing.

Both problems can be improved with organic matter, but it is far easier to choose ferns that suit the spot you already have than to fight the spot you wish you had.

Ferns for Dry Shade

Dry shade is the tougher assignment. The ferns that manage it tend to have leathery or wiry, often evergreen fronds, thick rhizomes that store water, and a tolerance for root competition. They will still need help in their first summer, but after that they look after themselves.

• Dryopteris affinis (golden male fern) – semi-evergreen and upright, with croziers covered in golden scales. It handles dry soil under trees better than almost anything else.
• Polystichum setiferum (soft shield fern) – lacy, soft-looking evergreen fronds on a plant that shrugs off drought once established. Excellent in a north-facing border.
• Polystichum aculeatum (hard shield fern) – stiffer and glossier than its soft cousin, with a useful tolerance of dry banks and thin soil.
• Cyrtomium fortunei (holly fern) – leathery, holly-like leaflets, one of the best choices for the rain shadow of a wall. Give it shelter in the coldest, most exposed gardens.
• Polypodium vulgare (common polypody) – native, creeping and happy on a dry bank, a stump or the base of a mature tree.
• Adiantum venustum (Himalayan maidenhair) – delicate in appearance, deciduous in practice, and surprisingly tolerant of dry shade once its roots are down.
• Asplenium scolopendrium (hart's tongue) – evergreen straps of foliage. It prefers damp, lime-rich soil, but copes with dry shade better than most gardeners expect.

Ferns for Damp Shade

This is where you can grow the lush, large-fronded ferns. Soil stays cool, so plants unfurl quickly in spring and hold their colour through summer, provided the ground does not dry out completely in a hot August.

• Matteuccia struthiopteris (shuttlecock fern) – the classic damp-shade fern. Funnel-shaped crowns reach 90cm or more, and it spreads by runners in moist soil.
• Athyrium filix-femina (lady fern) – fine, feathery and deciduous. Cultivars such as 'Lady in Red' add dark, almost black stems.
• Athyrium niponicum var. pictum (Japanese painted fern) – silver and burgundy fronds, but it resents drying out. Keep it in the dampest part of the border.
• Osmunda regalis (royal fern) – big, architectural and happiest on boggy, lime-free ground. Give it space.
• Blechnum spicant (hard fern) – neat evergreen rosettes with separate upright fertile fronds. It needs acid, moist soil and dislikes lime.
• Onoclea sensibilis (sensitive fern) – pale green and spreading. Good for a wet wild corner, but give it room or it will take it.

Ferns That Cope With Either

A handful of species are genuinely flexible, and they are the sensible starting point if you are still unsure about a spot. Dryopteris filix-mas (male fern) is the most adaptable of all, growing in everything from dry shade to damp borders. Dryopteris erythrosora (Japanese shield fern) is semi-evergreen, with new fronds that emerge copper-pink in spring, and it takes both dryish and moist ground with equal calm. Dryopteris dilatata (broad buckler fern) leans towards the damp end but is unfussy enough to use as a gap-filler in most woodland planting. Polystichum setiferum bridges the two camps as well, which is one reason it appears on so many reliable plant lists.

If you remember only one thing about ferns, make it this: they fail from the crown down, not the frond up. Almost every dead fern in a British garden was buried too deep, drowned, or watered for a fortnight and then forgotten.

Planting and Aftercare in Shade

The same fern planted badly in the right place will still disappoint. A few habits make the difference between a plant that establishes and one that lingers.

1. Plant in autumn or early spring, when the soil is cool and moist but the plant is not in active growth. Autumn gives roots time to settle before winter.
2. Set the crown level with the soil surface – never below it. In damp ground, plant on a slight mound so water runs away from the crown rather than into it.
3. Water deeply for the first summer. In dry shade, one thorough soak a week beats a daily sprinkle. After the first year, most of the ferns listed above need no watering at all.
4. Mulch with leafmould or garden compost, keeping it clear of the crown. A 5cm layer holds moisture and slowly improves heavy clay.
5. Cut back deciduous ferns in late winter, before the croziers move. Leave evergreens alone apart from removing browned or tatty fronds in spring.
6. Skip the nitrogen feed. Rich feeding produces soft, sappy fronds that scorch in dry shade and flop in wet ground.

Quick Fixes for Stubborn Spots

If it is dry shade

Do not try to change the whole border, just the planting pocket. Fork in two or three buckets of leafmould or compost over a square metre, plant small ferns rather than large ones, and water them through their first August. Small plants settle faster than big ones in rooty ground, and they need less water to do it.

If it is damp shade

Damp is fine; waterlogged is not. If the test hole fills with water in winter, raise the planting area into a low mound, add grit and compost to the backfill, and stick to the ferns that expect wet feet, such as royal fern and sensitive fern. If your soil is limy, cross hard fern off the list. And if the ground dries out hard in August, treat it as dry shade with a wet winter – the evergreen shield ferns will cope far better than the painted fern will.

Choose for the soil you actually have, plant the crown at the right depth, and a shady British border will give you thirty years of fronds with almost nothing asked in return.

Photo: Cup of Honey Lemon / Pexels