Do you know what kind of Carex?

IME with Ice Dance, the leaves are too tough and fibrous to comb. Is it really July before it looks good, even if you cut to near the ground with hand hedge shears in late winter before new growth starts? I wouldn’t pick and choose but whack the whole thing back so new foliage covers the old.

It was given to me so I can't say exactly but I think Ice Dance is a good guess. I thought you weren't supposed to cut back carex. I did once and they looked dreadful for the rest of the season. I suppose I could prune out some hunks of dead leaves but. what a lot of work for a plant I've been spreading around as an easy groundcover and edging! No more. Perhaps you have a better one to recommend?

There are several that are finer textured than Ice Dance that aren’t hardy enough to grow here since I have tried more than once but they died over winter, so I have no personal experience with any ornamental Carex other than Ice Dance though I do have some natives that aren’t evergreen. So I can‘t make any recommendations. The voles trim back my Ice Dance and keep it under control.

I found one of the finer-textured ones that wasn’t winter hardy for me, Evergold. I am not sure if it a spreading groundcover or more contained since it didn’t ever last more than a single season.

I noticed that a lot of my Ice Dance is dead and looks ratty so I will be chopping this weekend.

When first planted, Ice Dance looks terrific. But it has much broader foliage than most Carex selections and when the old fronds start to brown or die off or are damaged by cold, it looks terrible. Cutting it back can help but as noted, it will look really nasty for a while. And it spreads a bit too aggressively for my tastes.

Most other selections of Carex morrowii are finer textured and are defined clumpers and I much prefer them. I use 'Variegata' a lot (sometimes labeled as 'Aureovariegata') and that seems to require almost no care except for the occasional grooming. 'Evergold' is actually of a different species (C. oshimensis), but behaves similar to morrowii IME.

Sedges are one of my preferred ornamental grasses as they are usually nicely mounding clumpers, evergreen in my climate, do not seed around and typically requiring minimal maintenance to look good. I also use a lot of the southern hemisphere species - Carex comans, testacea, buchananii, flagellifera. But IME, they all do best with regular water and need to be replaced periodically....they just start to lose appeal and attractiveness after a few years.