Generally speaking most bulbs need foliage after bloomtime to prepare the bulb for the next season, so you are bound to have some foliage among your sedums for awhile. The anemone blanda (Grecian Windflower) actually expands its very attractive foliage a bit after bloomtime. It does disappear fairly quickly after that, probably before your sedums are doing much of anything. The look of this foliage is much nicer to my eye than that of most of the other bulbs that I use. Here's a picture anemone foliage which is mostly hidden when the anemone is in full bloom. Crocus foliage puts out quite grassy foliage (sort of looks like really floppy liriope plants) mostly after bloom. Here is a picture of hostas growing among crocus foliage. The front strappy stuff is from a thick bed of crocus & the stuff at the back is Sedum spurium spurium Fuldaglut (Dragon's blood). The crocus stuff disappears in time, but takes longer in my garden than the anemone foliage. Iris reticulata, a really nice very early bloomer for me, has foliage that elongates to a good 12 inches of very thin wispy stuff after blooming. I find this one a bit annoying among perennial plants which are just starting up, but it doesn't take too long to disappear. I haven't ever grown aconite, so I can't tell you what to expect. I've had snowdrops in the past, but can't remember much. I think the foliage is somewhat like the foliage of minature daffodils. Grape Hyacinths put out their foliage in the fall/winter & at least here generally look ratty most of the time. It might work for you if the foliage was gone in the spring & there during the cold weather, but I usually get some doing both & all of it snow-burned looking. I think that Chionodoxa (snow glories?) and Ipheions are a good bet. They both bloom fairly late in the (minor bulb) season (starting just as the anemone is finishing - the Ipheions then the Chionodoxa, but these 3 often overlap here)& their foliage disappears fairly quickly. Up close in the pictures the foliage looks strappy, but overall it's pretty small. Ipheion just starting in the Golden Creeping Jenny Ipheions with Tradescantia Sweet Kate, my favorite foliage plant for minor bulbs Chionodoxa - some of the foliage here belongs to the just starting Scilla siberica (darker blue to the back) & the larger stuff is early Hyacinth foliage. BTW, the Scilla has a wonderful color but spreads a LOT & the foliage can get quite thick looking. Another suggestion would be species tulips, especially the ones that are 6-8 inches or so. There's not a lot of foliage on these & it disappears very quickly. Tulipa humilus Persian Pearl - small blue-green foliage belongs to PP, while the big leaves are from full-size tulips Tulipa clusiana var. Chrysantha with more Ipheions

Brandon, before I invest time in trying to find the bits and pieces of information I've picked up over the years, such as that peaches have been shown to increase in actual size after more aggressive pruning compared to less (because of less energy invested in fruit production), I'd like you to steer me to a single piece of research based on cutting back bearing wood on mature plants at transplanting as opposed to immature plants. Not that I'd be convinced if you found the research that it holds true for all species, because I feel certain it doesn't, but it will motivate me to go to the effort. It doesn't matter if wood stores energy if it doesn't share it with the roots. Check the literature for what you do with a spur-bound apple or pear tree. You cut back the spurs (sexually mature wood) to encourage vegetative (sexually immature) growth. I have the benefit of watching the results of the removal of such wood on a regular basis and it is a routine treatment of some of the trees I manage. You remove enough of the spur wood and the trees start growing more vigorously. Trees that have been declining in size have started growing again. The reason immature fruit trees grow proportionately faster than mature trees is because juvenile wood doesn't spare energy for fruit and flowers which is very expensive and it is well known that regardless of rootstock you can greatly control the size of most species of fruit trees by accelerating the beginning of fruit production. The greatest managment risk in commercially growing fully dwarf apples is having them fruit excessively when they are too small- they often permanently runt out. Plants runt out when inadequate energy is being sent to the roots. Vegetative wood generously feeds the roots while fruiting wood is very stingy. I transplant hundreds of bearing age fruit trees on semi-dwarfing rootstock annually, and one of my biggest problems is having peaches runt out- the treatment- aggressive pruning. It is also the way to get them to avoid the problem in the first place. I know that all, and I mean all, of Carl Whitcomb's research was based on work with a few species of very young plants, so I can't go there for researched information. Show me where to go, Brandon, for some actual research on mature plants and I'll continue this discussion, but as it stands, I just have seen too many instances where pruning back has stimulated growth on mature trees. As far as blueberry plants, I'm not so sure one way or the other. When I got out of hort-school I had all the confidence as you in the research I'd been stuffing my head with (and a good thing- it helped me disguise my inexperience). Actual experience has made me much more skeptical of sweeping assumptions based on very limited research. Much more comprehensive medical research than research we are discussing here is often contradicted by subsequent research. I'm sure this would happen more with hort research if it was pursued with similar aggression and funding.

Here is example from my above post with picture of almost finished root pruning. Three wedges were made along with top and bottom rootball cuts made with several inches off each, one can see were old mark was at on trunk above soil line. Used was a recipricating saw with 9 inch pruning blade, finally finish cuts were made top to bottom straight down on outside of those wedges, those cuts not shown as they were not made yet when picture was taken. Martin

I don't know that I'm qualified to answer this or not. Here winter prunes all of my canes down to the ground nearly every year. Then when they grow the following spring they send out nice thick basil growth. I'd wait until it time to prune for your area. Then prune to the ground its bound to send up thick healthy canes. I can't see a negative to doing this. Hope this helps you Bonnie.