HFF Webinar
Fern Companions: Spring Ephemerals with Richie Steffen
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM PST
Watch for HFF email for registration.
Join Richie Steffen, HFF Past President and Executive Director of the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden, for a glimpse of spring beauty. This lecture will showcase flashy and delicate spring ephemeral plants that are easy to grow in the garden. Richie will show how the early bloomers can be used to enhance your fern garden as well as highlight some of the best evergreen and early sprouting ferns. As an added bonus, Richie will also cover when and how to cut back your ferns and which ferns hate to be cut back.
Few people have a passion for plants or an excitement about gardening more than Richie Steffen. Richie is the executive director for the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden, overseeing the development of the garden, its programs, and the rare plant collections. His expertise comes from over thirty-five years of experience in the horticultural field, with the last 24 years spent at the Miller Garden. Ferns have become a specialty for him, and he maintains extensive collections at the Miller Garden and his home garden. He has traveled to Europe, Japan, Chile, New Zealand and Costa Rica as well as numerous trips around the US studying ferns and other plants.
He is active in the gardening community and is currently past president of the Hardy Fern Foundation and the Northwest Horticultural Society. A noted lecturer, writer and photographer, Richie is the co-author of the “Plant Lover’s Guide to Ferns” with his friend and fern mentor Sue Olsen.