Overgrown Carex pendula

Mel, welcome to Growsonyou. Knoll Gardens offer the following advice:

These ornamental grasses are Evergreen: Comb or rake off any old, tired or dead leaves and flowers in spring. If needed evergreens can be cut back (by up to half) at almost any time from April to July. Do not cut back in autumn or winter.

Thank you Shirley tulip. Can I please ask another couple of questions?

So can I literally just cut straight across horizontally and would it be too late to do it now or would you say we are now in Autumn🤦🏼. Many thanks again.

welcome to GoY from me too.

It is a bit late now, so unless you don't mind if they don't survive you can cut it down.

dont be shy in asking questions, that's one of the things I like about the site you can ask as many as you wan and there isn't such a thing as a silly question.

Thank you Seaburngirl. I'll hold fire for now then. I did actually cut one back last weekend, so I'll see if this survives (no problem if it doesn't as there are plenty of others around) and I'm still finding seedlings shooting up ( just found about 10 whilst walking around the pond)🤦🏼🤦🏼🤦🏼. Should I wait until about March time next year do you think?

I would strongly advise you to get rid of them all.They spread like wildfire and will pop up in lots of places you don't want them. I rue the day I was seduced by those pretty seed heads.... I've found them in the lawn, in plant pots, in flower beds....and I only planted ONE!

I would second that Stera. I do not have it in my garden & wouldn’t dream of putting it in as I have seen how it takes over in other places. It’s an absolute nightmare & if the clumps are allowed to get big you’d need a Samson to dig
them out!

I third that Steragram and Feverfew. We have several rampant ones in our close and I am constantly pulling seedlings out of our bricked driveway. One has got between next doors raised driveway and ours so I've dug out the weed killer and sprayed it, they are truly a waste of space and an absolute thug!

Only good thing about it is that you may make a flour out of the seeds and make flapjacks with it. Otherwise a thug as said.

Wow Owdboggy, have you actually done that? If so what was it like?

It was one one of those living off the grid type programs years ago. Famous explorer plus food expert, names escape me. They seemed to enjoy the results.

Ah well, too late now because I haven't got any left!!!

I absolutely love them; such a graceful plant. However, mine became just too big in my smallish garden, so I dug it up to make way for other things. That was about six years ago and I'm still finding new seedlings around the garden. Very easy to pull up but always feel sad doing so. Be good to pot one up and watch it's beauty grow until it's time to replace it.