Re: evergreens for wet soil?


I've got horsetail all over my yard.  After six years or so of making a giant attempt at eradication each spring, only to have it cheerfully come back again the following year, I decided last spring to try leaving it alone.  It goes dormant fairly early in the summer -- June, I think?  Before that, where it was in the way or shading other plants I just folded it down and tucked it under the foliage of nearby plants as a surface mulch, rather than trying to dig it out.  If you don't have to get started on this new property right away, I could let you know in a month or so what the results are -- whether I have more this year than in the past, or the same amount.  Horsetail has the reputation (which I haven't confirmed) of bringing up lots of minerals from deep in the soil, so it seems like if it could be lived with rather than killed off, it could be beneficial.  And it adds such a pretty green lushness to my wild-style garden, in the short time that it's above ground. 

As far as cover crops, clover and mustard probably wouldn't mind the soggy soil.  And it seems to me I've seen dense stands of azaleas and rhododendrons in areas that flood in winter.  Of course you could always grow cattails :-).



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