Once you have cattails or certain grasses (like canary reed grass) you'll never ever be rid of them. While I'm not suggesting you not plant cattails or grasses, only that you take a minute to think if you'll ever want to do something else with this area.

Yes Cattails and other grassy bog plants are available, just contact your local pond supplier. They are also available through most any mail order company that deals in bog plants.

I just did research that said cattails need at least a 1/2-1" of water to thrive. Right now the back yard is pretty soggy but the area we plant to put the cattails or whatever in isn't huge. This part of the yard is almost always wet because of a spring. We've even thought about digging down for a pond but not right now. Anyway, if we planted them, they wouldn't spread too far, right? And if they did, they would die after the water dried up unless we made sure we saturated the area? And if we want to be rid of them in the future, we could try digging up what we can and put plastic down to stop re-growth, right?

We just realized there are some cattails growing up at my DH's family camp. So we may be able to get some from there....Really don't know of any pond stores in the area and Lowe's doesn't have anything that I can tell. Most of the grasses are for semi-moist to dry. They probably wouldn't do good in this spot when we're getting a lot of rain.

Thanks!

Leslie, cattails are also easy to grow from seed. Just collect some of the catkins when they are mature and plant the cotton.

Have dry in summer and wet in winter with shade area in yard. What type of grasses would you plant in such a problem spot? How about bamboo!

Acorus or sweet flag is a grass family that does well in moist conditions, but with regular water it will also be fine in normal soil. Carex is another grass family that would be suitable, but I'm not sure if it's hardy in your area. I think some might.