Indoor Ferns

Live Indoor Ferns, Potted and Ready for the House

Ferns are the shortest path from a bare shelf to a room that feels alive. They ask for bright indirect light, air that is not desert dry, and a grower who checks the soil instead of watering on a schedule. Everything in this collection is a true fern, grown in a pot for indoor life and shipped rooted and ready to settle in.

Indoor Fern Care in Four Steps

1. Light

Bright indirect light is the sweet spot: an east window, or a few feet back from a south or west window behind a sheer curtain. Direct midday sun scorches fronds, and deep shade makes growth thin and leggy. Blue Star Fern and Bird’s Nest Fern handle a dimmer corner better than the lacy types do.

2. Water, and the split that matters

Most ferns like steady moisture, but not all of them, and that difference is what kills the most plants. Soft-frond types such as Boston Fern and Bird’s Nest Fern want the top inch of soil to stay barely damp, so check every few days and water when it starts to feel dry. The epiphytic ferns that grow on bark in the wild, including Staghorn Fern, Blue Star, Rabbit’s Foot Fern, Kangaroo Paw Fern and the E.T. Fern, store water in their rhizomes and rot if the mix stays soggy. Let the top two inches dry out before you water those.

Limp, yellowing fronds usually mean too much water. Brown, crispy tips usually mean the air is too dry rather than the soil, so reach for a pebble tray before you reach for the watering can.

3. Humidity

Indoor heating is harder on a fern than any watering mistake. Group your plants together, set the pot on a tray of pebbles and water, or run a humidifier through the winter. Keep ferns clear of heat vents and drafty doorways, which dry a frond out faster than anything else in the house.

4. Soil, potting and grooming

Use a peat-based potting mix that drains freely, in a pot with drainage holes. Feed lightly through spring and summer, then stop until the light lengthens again in late winter. Snip tired fronds off at the base rather than trimming the brown tips; the plant pushes replacements from the crown, and a half-cut frond never recovers.

Which Fern Should You Start With?

• The classic: Boston Fern, plus the ruffled Petticoat and gold-flecked Tiger Fern forms of the same plant.
• The forgiving ones: Bird’s Nest Fern and Victoria Bird’s Nest Fern, with solid glossy fronds instead of lacy ones, so they lose far less water to dry air.
• Small spaces: Heart Fern, a low mound of little heart-shaped leaves sized for a desk or a bathroom shelf.
• Something to mount: Staghorn Fern and Staghorn Netherlands Fern, which grow on a board or in a hanging basket rather than in soil.
• Foliage color: Tri-Color Fern, Silver Lace Fern and Silver Ribbon Fern, all variegated in silver, cream or rose.
• A floor-sized statement: Australian Tree Fern, which builds a trunk and a canopy of arching fronds.
• Conversation pieces: the metallic Blue Oil Fern, the furry creeping rhizomes of Rabbit’s Foot and E.T. Fern, the wavy-edged Kangaroo Paw Fern, and the near-indestructible Austral Gem Fern.

Ferns Beyond the House

Hardy ferns for the shade garden live in our Ferns collection, and the rest of the indoor assortment is in Houseplants.