Gardunio grows giant fern

June Gardunio stands next to her 53-year-old Boston fern. She received the plant from a friend in 1970 and it has flourished in the Gardunio home since then to its present size.The stand it sits on was specially made by a neighbor to display the plant.

That June Gardunio has a green thumb is apparent when one looks at the Gardunio garden, which is full of ferns, flowers and other plants.

It is what is inside the house that really demonstrates Gardunio’s way with a plant, however.

A Boston fern, with more than six-foot long fronds, has held pride of place in the Gardunio home for 53 years.

Gardunio said she was given the fern by her former neighbor, Ruth Pasquale.

“She came over with a dirty little old pot and you could barely tell it was a fern,” Gardunio said.

Pasquale asked if she wanted the plant and Gardunio took it.

That was in 1970.

Since then the fern has thrived in the front room of the house, next to a window, and has grown and grown and been re-potted several times over the years.

When the fronds got to be very long, another neighbor had the solution.

The neighbor, John Montoya, and Gardunio’s husband, Leo, went out to cut firewood.

Montoya pointed out one long log and told Leo not to cut it. Four days later, Montoya showed up at the Gardunio’s house with a five-foot tall plant stand he had sculpted out of the log with a chainsaw.

The plant still sits on that stand.

Leo climbs up on a step ladder and waters the plant about once a week, a job he’s not too fond of. “I’m afraid of heights,” he said with a laugh.

The Gardunios are proud of their fern and would like to re-pot the giant fern, but say they can’t do it themselves and will need help.

Leo said, “I tell people a gardener didn’t grow that — a Gardunio did.”

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