I don't know what fern that is, I can tell you some it is not, lol.

That is not garlic mustard though or not what we call garlic mustard down here.

Sorry, now I see you do not mean that is a picture of garlic mustard.

For some reason I want to say toothwort but that is a wild guess.

Not sure what the fern is...maybe Ostrich...a spreader. The other one looks like hydrophyllum. Here's a link.

Here is a link that might be useful: hydrophyllum

I think the fern is Ostrich (Matteuccia struthiopteris) also.

In the close up picture of the unidentified item, is that some sort of flower bud or seed case?

It does look like the flower bud of waterleaf. I looked at water leaf all day today, lol, but ours is the kind where the leaf is lobed more than divided and looks sort of like a maple leaf instead of box elder.

Thanks for the link to hydrophyllum. I think that's what it is, and I'm glad to see it's native.

esh ga, yes that's the flower bud cluster in the picture. I think they get small white flowers, which makes sense if it's hydrophyllum.

I have this all over the place, here in Hutchinson MN. I was told by my boss, the greenhouse garden center owner, it was a wild geranium, a NASTY weed, the roots are a web and tough to get through. I let mine flower, I see yours is about to, mine is just beginning, then I go through and pull all the green out so it doesn't compete for moisture with my hostas all summer. It hasn't "taken over" anything and it has not moved to my lawn so I tolerate it. A year or two after I clear a new area it appears and can go crazy. So it is a native but invasive or desireable...it is up to the beholder.

The picture is not wild geranium.

The photo shows a Waterleaf, which are native and not a geranium. Yours look exactly like mine, which are virginia waterleaf, although there are several other species and I can't be sure you don't have one of those instead. They do spread in the right conditions, but I don't find them to be a problem.