plant sale

Just got back from the Lasdon Park & Arboretum plant sale where we both 
worked as cashiers.  It is always a good sale with a wide selection of really 
choice perennials, shrubs and trees, but in past years the weather has been awful, 
rainy, cold, or both, and attendance has been disappointing.  Today was 
brilliant and hot (I think I'd really prefer cold) and the crowds turned out. 

 Since I already have too many plants lined up waiting to be planted, I tried 
to control myself, and came away with only about a dozen plants.  Most of 
what I bought was fairly conventional - nice varieties of things I already have, 
like a pink Stokesia to go with my blue and white ones.  What I did invest 
heavily in is a dwarf variegated sedge, Carex pennsylvanica 'Snowline.'  Do  any 
of you have experience with this plant?  

I have an area at the bottom of the so-called lawn adjacent to the small pond 
that is difficult.  The soil is very heavy clay despite years of amendments - 
that is, what soil there is between several subterranean boulders.  It is 
almost boggy in the spring since it is barely above the level of the pond, but in 
the summer dries out to cement-like hardness.  I have lost quite a few things 
that I have planted there - in fact about the only thing that has really 
thrived (thriven?) is Oenethera (sp.? evening primrose) and several clumps of 
Miscanthus.  This spring one of the Miscanthus clumps seems dead in the middle, 
but I'm told that this is not too serious - I must just dig it up and divide it. 
 Of course it will probably take a back-hoe to dig it, but that's another 
problem.  

What I had been thinking was that I would develop the area with a variety of 
grasses, and I have added several others that seem to be doing all right.  
Deer don't bother Miscanthus and don't do much damage to the others - or haven't 
so far.  So when I saw this sedge, I thought it might make a low  element for 
the front of the grass garden.  The pond is edged with sedges which grew there 
naturally - I don't know what kind they are but I think they are really 
lovely, making clumps abut two feet high by three feet across of very fine, arching 
foliage that stays pretty even when it turns brown in the winter.  I don't 
know if this sedge will work, but it's worth a try.

Now it's too hot - 88 degrees - to go out and plant the new stuff - hope 
tomorrow is cooler and we get the rain that was predicted for today.
Auralie

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