Suggested Sedges

It amazes me that native sedges aren’t more widely known and planted in gardens. What’s not to love?!

Little fountains of cascading grass-like foliage, so tidy. Zero effort required for them to flourish. Super habitat value, hosting the larvae of various butterflies and moths, and supporting many beneficial insects.

The sedge revolution requires that we all start asking for these wonderful plants at nurseries!

Here are a few of my favourites.

Bristle-leaved sedge (Carex eburnea)

Bristle-leaved sedge (Carex eburnea)

Height: 6 in to 12 in

Flowers: greenish white

Blooming period: spring

Exposure: shade to sun

Soil: regular

Bristle-leaved sedge is a fantastic addition to the woodland garden. Growing is tidy, rounded clumps, with thin, narrow leaves, it looks great when planted in masses along the woodland border. The flowers are small, on spikes, as are the seedheads, which persist through winter and produce tiny black seeds.

Plantain-leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea)

Plantain-leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea)

Height: 1 ft

Flowers: yellowish green

Blooming period: mid-spring

Exposure: shade to partial shade

Soil: regular to moist

Specialist pollinator interactions: larval host for Appalachian brown butterfly

If you’re looking for a low-growing, grass-like plant as a groundcover in shade, this perennial, clump-forming sedge is an excellent choice. Its leaves are unusually wide for a sedge, with distinctive veins, and are often evergreen, persisting over winter. Other attractive features are the reddish-purple sheaths and the small but distinctive flowers in mid-spring, which stand erect, emerging above the leaves. Wind-pollinated, the plant spreads vegetatively.

Fox Sedge (Carex vulpinoidea)

Fox sedge (Carex vulpinoidea)

Height: 1.5 ft to 3.5 ft

Flowers: green to golden and brown

Blooming period: late spring to early summer

Exposure: sun to partial sun

Soil: moist to wet

Specialist pollinator interactions: larval host for broad-winged skipper, mulberry skipper, two-spotted skipper, black dash, dion skipper, duke’s skipper, eyed brown, grass-miner moth, tufted sedge moth

 Like many sedges, this one requires moist conditions and is grown in gardens mainly for its foliage, which form dense tufts of narrow leaves. Useful in rain gardens, where it tolerates flooding, it can spread to form colonies.

Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pensylvanica)

Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica)

Height: 6 in to 1 ft

Flowers: creamy green

Blooming period: mid- to late spring

Exposure: shade to sun

Soil: regular to dry; drought tolerant

Specialist pollinator interactions: larval host for Elachista argentosa moth, Elachista madarellamoth

A great choice for dry, shady conditions, this clump-forming perennial sedge is low-growing, forms attractive, arching tufts, and doesn’t take any work to maintain. It takes on a purplish cast when in bloom, and is cross-pollinated by wind, also producing clonal colonies. It does best in humus-rich soil high in organic matter.

More sedge profiles to come in a future post!

Hello Sedges

The three Sedges Instead beds are now planted on a neglected public boulevard in the west end of Toronto (near Lansdowne and Dundas)! The native sedges I’ve included are Plantain-leaved Sedge (Carex plantaginea), Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pensylvanica), Graceful Sedge (Carex gracilis), and Fox Sedge (Carex vulpinoidea).

I’ve interspersed some native wildflowers as well. Whenever passersby see me working and stop to talk, they always say that they hope there will be flowers. And they always lament the fact that the City doesn’t maintain the boulevard!

Plant Source Matters!

There are so many reasons why native plant specialty nurseries are the best places to buy native plants, and I was recently reminded of one particularly important reason.

In the spring, native woodland plants started to appear at regular nurseries under the label “Ontario Natives.” I didn’t get picky about the fact that some of them weren’t Ontario natives (e.g. yellow trillium, Trillium luteum). But I was intrigued because many of the plants for sale with the “Ontario Natives” label are species that are hard to find for sale even at native plant nurseries: woodlanders such as trilliums, Jack-in-the-pulpit, hepatica, blue cohosh, turk’s cap lily, etc. Most importantly, these are species that are often wild-dug, in the U.S., a practice that depletes wild populations.

So, going into Nancy Drew mode, I started to investigate.

What I found out—or, rather, didn’t find out—spoke volumes.

The “Ontario Natives” line is distributed by Sipkens Nurseries to a number of nurseries in Ontario (not to specialty native plant nurseries, as far as I know, but to general nurseries). When I contacted Sipkens with very specific questions, I was given general answers.

I asked if the plants were grown in the U.S. and potted up here, and was told, “Some are grown from seed and division in our nursery while others are purchased from another nursery grower. None are from wild harvesting.”

I followed up three times (April, May and August) re-asking my question about specific species they sell and whether or not they come from a U.S. sourse.

Sipkens didn’t answer. Yet knowing the answer is of interest and importance to native plant gardeners who 1) don’t want “native plants” grown in Texas, for example, with genetics that might make them less fit in Ontario and might cross with locally adapted species; 2) want a meaningful guarantee right from the source (“another nnursery grower”) that the plants are not wild-dug.

Sipkens didn’t answer.

One more reason to buy your native plants from local native plant nurseries! They will answer your questions about source and genetic provenance.

For a list of local native plant nurseries, visit the North American Native Plant Society website, www.nanps.org or join the Facebook group Ontario Native Plant Gardeners, or check out the Halton Master Gardeners’ list: https://haltonmastergardeners.com/2020/03/28/native-plants-nurseries-in-ontario/

Evolution of the Front Garden

I was devastated when the huge ash tree in the front yard succumbed to emerald ash borer and was cut down by the city.

But this was an opportunity to totally redo the garden!

We planted a red oak and dozens of sun-loving native meadow plants. Below is a photo of the new garden on planting day, May 2018.

Planting day, May 28, 2018

Here it is, a year later, August 2019.

The native meadow plants have flourished with very little maintenance and almost no supplementary watering. Below, the front garden at the beginning of its third growing season, May 2020.

And here it is, flourishing in late summer of its third growing season, August 2020.