A Prairie Garden Journal    by Dick Meyer

Ornamental Grasses

Miscanthus in fall
(purpurascens)

The strongly vertical lines of grasses are unlike any other garden plant, which makes them stand out in almost any landscape or garden scene. Grasses have a longer period of seasonal visual interest compared to almost any other garden plant. Their interest lasts into or though our long winters. They bring a look of regional authenticity into our garden, after all, grasses are the dominant plant in our indigenous Wyobraska landscape. And if that's not enough reasons, they tend to be easy to grow, low-maintenance plants.

If you've been thinking about adding some ornamental grasses to your landscape, here's some further classifications that may be helpful as you decide which grasses are right for your garden or landscape.

Miscanthus with Daylilies
(variegatus)

Previous Articles

Fractions March 15
Yardner March 8
Urban Legends of Trees March 22
Que Serra, Serra March 29
Grocery Store or Garbage Dumpster Plants April 5
Planning Your Landscape Project April 12
Planting Cool Trees April 19
Keeping Trees Alive April 26
Thrillers, Chillers, Spillers May 03
Will You Still Love Them May 10

2006 Articles

As Wyobraska homeowners and gardeners use more grasses in their home landscapes and gardens we are seeing just how versatile these plant can be. Grasses make great ornamental "filler" plants in perennial beds and borders. Because they don't have colorful flowers, they don't compete in the summertime with the colorful succession of blooming perennials that dominate the summertime garden and landscapes, but their subtly interesting vertical foliage provides excellent background and visual softening for the perennial bed. Then as summertime wanes, fading the vibrantly colored flowers, the grasses send up their seed stalk to tower over the flowers and just as they finally reach their full height by late summer, they begin to take on a range of fall colors from straw yellow to burnt orange to rich maroon red.

But ornamental grasses shouldn't be confined to just perennial borders and beds. Grasses can also be striking plants when planted alongside and among traditional tree and shrub landscape groupings. They are particularly good companion plant to summer glowering shrubs like shrub roses, butterfly bush, blue mist spirea, and hibiscus. Cool season grasses like the feather reed grass create a scene with year-around interest when planted alongside shrubs with a good spring flowering and fall foliage.  Color shrubs like serviceberry, black chokeberry and Viburnums. Warm season bunch grasses like big and little bluestem are excellent in combinations with large evergreen shrubs and small evergreen trees. The orange-red fall and winter color of these grasses is even more striking against the backdrop of wintergreen foliage of evergreen trees and shrubs.

 Grasses are commonly divided into one of two groups, cool season or warm season. As the names imply, cool season grasses prefer to grow in cooler weather and warm season grasses prefer to grow in the hot summer growing period. Most ornamental grasses are warm season grasses, hardy pampas grass, Miscanthus, big and little bluestem, switch grass and fountain grasses all fall into this category. They start growing in mid to late May or even early June, and reach their full seasonal potential by late August to early September. Their rapid growth through the summer creates a visually dynamic summertime garden.

Little Blue Stem

Fountain Grass

Switch Grass

Hardy Pampas

(aka  Plume Grass
Ravennae Grass)

Big Blue Stem

Miscanthus
( Maiden Grass)

Zebra Grass
(Miscanthus)

Feather Reed

Prairie Dropseed