Carex and Ajuga

Somewhere in my past travels I saw a line of Carex (Sedge) planted within a mass of Ajuga (Bugleweed). I believe it was at Longwood Gardens but it could have easily been in a magazine or even a dream (no exaggeration here). Either way, I found the combination intriguing and vowed to attempt it myself.

I have oodles of Ajuga in my garden:

And I love me some Carex.

It didn’t take long for me to identify the area where I wanted to make the magic happen:  

All that was left to do was to purchase the Carex. My go-to retailer when ordering grasses on-line is Santa Rosa Gardens. They always have grasses super cheap, especially in the middle of summer. The plan was to acquire around ten sedges as this vignette needed to make a statement.

Lo and behold, Santa Rosa came through yet again and I purchased ten Carex oshimensis ‘Ice Cream’ at $3.99 a pop (hop over to their site immediately, they only have four left in stock):

Once they arrived in the mail, I wasted no time and went to work; blazing hot sun and high temps be damned.

Step one was to dig out small plugs of the Ajuga:

Step two was to replace those plugs with the newly purchased Carex:

It didn’t take long before all were planted:

Step three was to transplant the cut out Ajuga plugs to other parts of the garden.

Step four was to heavily water all of these plants.

The final step is to now kick back and wait and see if this planting performs and actually looks any good.

Only time will tell.