Kay Boydston Fern House, Fernwood Botanical Garden

The garden grew out of a family property. Kay and Walter Boydston bought the first 12.5 acres (about 5 hectares) in 1941 and made it their home, according to Wikipedia and a Michigan tourism article. The site became a public garden in 1964, through the efforts of Lawrence and Mary Plym, according to Wikipedia. The fern house is named after Kay Boydston, and the garden's website presents the founder as a skilled grower, propagator and hybridizer of ferns. In 2010 a railway garden exhibit, designed by Paul Busse of Applied Imagination, was added. A new Education Center opened in 2018, according to the tourism article.

The garden's website gives the conservatory an area of about 1,000 square feet (about 93 m²), organised around a central mass of rock. The photograph published under the heading “Fern Conservatory” on the garden's Gardens page shows a sloping glazed roof: glass panels divided by glazing bars. The walls are of vertical timber boards with small windows in dark frames. A waterfall runs down the rock into a small pond at one end. Wikipedia calls the building a “conservatory (greenhouse)” without specifying the glazing.

According to the garden's website, more than a hundred kinds of temperate ferns and other tropical plants grow in the rocks and in the nearby beds. Wikipedia instead describes “more than 100 kinds of tropical ferns”. The photograph shows dense planting: finely divided fern fronds, broad leaves, plants with deep purple foliage in the foreground and tall thin stems at the back. The garden also has a hardy fern collection among its other spaces.

The garden is open all year, according to the home page of the garden's website, and Wikipedia states that an admission fee is charged. The fern house is presented on the gardens page, alongside other sections, including the Herb & Sensory Garden and the Bauer Terrace. The railway garden exhibit added in 2010 is another stop on the visit. The address is 13988 Range Line Road, Niles, Michigan, on a property of 105 acres (about 42 hectares), according to a Michigan tourism blog.