Beautiful, Animated and Bio-diverse- Ornamental Landscape Grasses

As far back as the early 1900’s, gardeners from a wide range of climates have been enjoying various species of perennial ornamental grasses in their landscape.

Ornamental landscape grasses allow us to rapidly change the dynamics of our landscape, creating works of art by maximizing various colors, textures and physical characteristics of the specie or species selected.  They allow us to be conserving (as most are drought tolerant once established), high spirited, inspiring and maximize out time management by offering low maintenance.

In the broad sense, ornamental grasses (including sedges and rushes) are ever expanding, as the grass palette which started with maybe a dozen perennial grasses to choose from in the early 1900’s has increased to over 100 exhilarating choices.  The increase in diversity and ease of day-today care, the popularity of ornamental landscape grasses has never been greater, reflecting the rhythms of our shared places, of the sun, and the seasonal change.

The two main growth habits of grasses are referred to as runners or clump forming.  When applied appropriately, running grasses can minimize maintenance as they knit together stabilizing soils and making excellent groundcovers.  When used in the wrong situation, you can imagine the problems that might be created, as these runners take over less vigorous neighbors creating monocultures instead of the diverse garden you were hoping to create.

Tufted grasses, as some clump grasses are referred to, grow slower and their space within the garden is easier to determine and many clump forming grasses make excellent architectural pieces, such as Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and Pennisetum orientale ‘Lil Bunny’.

When discussing ornamental grasses growing seasons, grasses are typically referred to as cool-season growers and warm-season growers.  Their periods of growth are determined by temperature, days of sunlight and soil temperature.  Cool season grasses grow well from sub-freezing temperatures into the low 70’s as warm-season grasses respond well to hot weather, superbly adapted to temperatures reaching the mid 90’s.  The hotter the day, the more they revel, growing steadily larger and producing magnificent flowers (awns) at summer’s end.

The almost over-looked aspect of maximizing landscape grasses is they continue to pay forward, as over the years most ornamental landscape grasses can be divided with a knife or narrow edged trowel and discarding the dead material will provide a healthy and strong plant the following spring.