Carex Bromoides with Carex Little Midge - Planted Under Hornbeams - August 2022

Just yesterday, I posted a photo showing off the Carex Albicans that The Bird planted as ground cover in her little backyard garden and talked about how that marked the 12th sedge that we've planted in the backyard.   I had posted about planting a little cluster of four Carex Bromoides earlier this Summer and included a video from Roy Diblik where he talks about his favorite Carex and how he combines them.  In that video, he talked about Bromoides, muehlenbergii & muskingumensis (Little Midge).  And how to combine them together with a dominant species and 'islands' of other species in various percentages.  

That video pushed me to think about how I can use some of these in our landscape and how to create a unique pattern that is unique to our garden and isn't a 'monoculture'.  

When we were up at Northwind in Wisconsin, I came home with some of the Carexes that Roy talked about:  Eight Carex Bromoides.  And Two Carex muskingumensis Little Midge.  When planted together in a matrix of sorts, leaves me with a 4:1 ratio of Bromoides:Little Midge.

First up is the Carex muskingumensis Little Midge.  Below are a couple of photos showing off the one quart nursery containers from Northwind Perennial Farm:

Carex Little Midge prefers moist ground, so I thought it would work well for us down in the bottom of the swale underneath the Hornbeams.  

Up next (and below in the photo) are Carex Bromoides.  I planted four of these earlier this Summer in the backyard.  

With that 4:1 ratio, I had ten total Carex to plant underneath the Hornbeams.  In order to plant these near the border, I had to dig up and transplant a couple of hostas that were sitting in this bed.  I ended up digging them up and just moving them back, further *under* the canopy of the Frans Fontaine columnar Hornbeams (for now).  

Below you can see a post-planting (annotated) photo of the area.  The green circles are Carex Bromoides.  The orange circles are Carex muskingumensis (Little Midge).  And the two purple circles show the pair of transplanted hostas that I moved out.  

These ten sedges add to the total of carex/sedges that we have in the garden and this gets us to 22 total (various) Carexes planted:

• 5 Everillo sedges - planted in 2020 and 2021
• 2 Carex Pensylvanica under the Hornbeams - planted in 2021
• 4 Carex Bromoides by the Astilbes - planted in Summer 2022
• 1 Carex Albicans in the Bird's garden - planted late Summer 2022
• 8 Carex Bromoides under the Hornbeams - planted late Summer 2022
• 2 Carex muskingumensis 'Little Midge' - planted with the Bromoides in late Summer 2022

These ten also add to the volume of ground cover that is planted.  #5 on my 2022 to-do list was to 'fall in love with groundcover', so these ten contribute towards that goal.  In the post showing my first four Carex Bromoides from earlier this season, I talked about what I needed to plant to get a 'completed' grade on that to-do list item.  I postulated that since (at that point), I had six groundcover plantings (4 Carex Bromoides, Two Prairie Dropseeds) for the season, I needed to plant "at least ten more" to consider my goal met.   

With these ten, I now have planted 17 total for the year.  12 Carex Bromoides, 2 Carex muskingumensis 'Little Midge', 1 Carex Albicans and 2 Prairie Dropseeds.  I have a few more yet to plant, so we'll get over 17 before the season is out.