What does this group have in common? They are green and native. Their contribution to the landscape from a human perspective is an eye-pleasing and calming bright green.
Are there any differences? Ginger, wild onions, and sedge are flowering plants that produce seeds, while ferns do not flower; they produce spores. For all practical purposes, there is no difference unless you are a big seed gatherer.
Groundcovers
Pennsylvania sedge, Carex pensylvanica, starts new growth by mid-April, and by late April, it starts to bloom. Here it is alternating with shooting stars in a bed near the pawpaw and under the birds’ summer water dish. It gets just a little early afternoon sun in this spot on the south side of the pawpaw. This lovely grassy little sedge also does well in the dry shade of our enormous silver maple with very little sun and no supplemental water.
Ginger is not so tolerant. It dies when it grows beyond the shade of whatever it is under, and sulks if it gets too dry. I find that it needs supplemental water when the weather settles in to an “abnormally dry” pattern, which unfortunately does not seem to be so abnormal anymore.
The ramps are an experiment. I brought a bunch to cook with from the local farmer’s market, and stuck a couple in the ground last summer. They are in the ginger bed under the smoke bushes that line one side of my kitchen garden.
I will probably separate the ginger and ramps into their own areas next summer. A garden looks much more intentional when groups of plants are well defined. These two are too dissimilar to be mixed in one bed, but would look terrific next to each other—there’s a good contrast in leaf form. The stray crocus, probably moved there by a chipmunk, will be moved back to its the nearby bed when they start to go dormant.
Ferns as Bedding Plants
A single ostrich fern looks lonely, but will start producing its own colony under most conditions. A colony of ostrich ferns is spectacular in May and June when they shoot up to at least 2–3 feet, in the beautiful green of a well-hydrated lawn in April. They do not like it when it gets hot and dry, so I let them go dormant. They may respond to supplemental watering, but they seem to be quite happy and healthy this way. Forcing a plant to be active when it wants to be dormant cannot be any healthier than forcing yourself to stay up well past your bedtime night after night.
The last plant, lady fern, is a fairly new addition that lives in the rain garden. These ferns have gone through their second winter and are just breaking dormancy. They are supposed to be a little more restrained in their habits than ostrich ferns, but we shall see.
These drifts of green are very relaxing to look at and delightful as a respite from wilder neighbor plants.