Enough of the home improvements Mr Irving Coleridge...

One of the wonderful things about life is the way wildly disparate bits of it can suddenly join up together in ways you could never have dreamed of.

Last Sunday I was indulging my gardening side with two of my very favourite planty friends. Consulting the National Gardens Scheme guide, we decided to visit the National Collection of day lilies, which lives somewhere near Bicester.

It was a bit of a disappointment, frankly, as even flowers as lovely as day lilies need a decent setting, and this lot were basically in a small field. So we left pretty fast, though I did manage to pick up some Crocosmias to replace the ones that S dug up and threw away on her only gardening venture. And these ones are brighter and more beautiful.

Crocosmia delight aside, it felt like a big voyage in the baking heat for not much reward, so we decided to drop in to an open garden in Kidlington on the way home.

And what a fine decision it turned out to be: we entered through an unpreposessing garage to find ourselves in quite the most incredible garden imaginable. It was a shrine to ferns.

We had tea and cake in the conservatory and then wandered down gravel paths through what was basically a shady woodland in the heart of suburbia. The shade came from old trees and pergolas covered in ivy and clematis, and there were ferns everywhere, some tiny and delicate and some huge and imposing. It was incredible.

There were other plants as well, hostas and fuchsias and other lovely things, and every corner seemed to have a surprise in it.

We sighed collectively and made to leave back through the garage, stopping to look at the little ferns for sale.

And there in litre pots were lovely looking specimens of Polystichum Setiferum Plumosum "Bevis" -- a previously rare fern which has recently become more widely available.

And I thought to myself ... the Bevis Frond!

The Bevis Frond is Nick Saloman, described (quite accurately I think) on a fan site as a neo-psychedelic renaissance man.

His songs are a combination of swirling psychedelic guitars and sharp, bittersweet lyrics that can make grown women cry really quite easily. His earlier albums were a large part of the soundtrack to my early 20s, as my Significant Ex was one of his biggest fans, but he has cropped up in several places since, and there are still times when only a Bevis Frond track will do.

From his songs I have found out what fan vaulting is, and sphagnum, and a triptych, and the phrase "gentle, sensitive, loving man" (used wryly) has passed into my lexicon. Breaking down on the Westway also had a whole new resonance.

But in all these years I never knew what a Bevis Frond was. And now I do. And one day, when I have excavated the shady corner of my garden, I shall grow some.

joella