Ornamental Grasses

Ornamental grasses have many varied uses in a garden, they provide and excellent, and valuable, contrast to herbaceous and mixed borders, they can be individually planted in pots and other containers and can be planted on the edge of a wild flower meadow. As well as their delicate flower sprays and there dramatic plumes ornamental grasses are also loved for their slender stems and arching leaves.

Leaf color is an important consideration when designing a garden and ornamental grasses offer a wide range (from green to almost black and many variegated varieties). There are several yellow or golden varieties such as the bright yellow Milium effusum 'Aureum' and golden sedge (Carex stricta 'Bowles'Golden').

Black Grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus Nigrescens) is not really a grass but an evergreen clump forming perennial. It looks very much like grass (hence it's name) and has strap-shaped curving black leaves and bell-shaped, white with a hint of purple, flowers that appear in summer and are followed by dark blue black fruits. The plant grows to become around eight inches high and spreads about one foot.

Although taller varieties of ornamental grasses are often relegated to the very back of a border, some varieties can make excellent focal points in themselves and their architectural dimensions can look spectacular when placed correctly. Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana) is one of the most imposing of ornamental grasses with it's distinctive flower plumes of up to 4ft high it is often used in flower arrangements. Varieties such as the golden variegated 'Splendid Star' can look great alongside a gazebo or placed well behind a garden fountain, it can even look great in the center of a lawn.

There are plenty of other ornamental grasses which have interesting flowers such as Chinese Fountain Grass (pennisetum alopecuroides Hamein) which produces five inch panicles of greenish-white long lasting flowers which eventually mature to a gray-brown color (which have been described as looking like furry caterpillars). Another point of interest about this, densely tufted, grass is that the dark green leaves fade to golden-yellow towards the end of summer.

The shorter types of ornamental grasses are extremely useful for placing at the very front of borders and can also be used as edging. Shorter varieties can also look good poking through gravel pathways or in a rock garden. The fluffy feather tops of Pennisetum villosum can give an airy look to the likes of Achillea, if placed around the edges (they can also be cut and dried). This grass also looks good at the very edge of a border where it can flow onto a pathway creating a rather informal but interesting look to an otherwise straight edge.

Eric Johnstone has been a landscape gardener for about 15 years and writes for a small number of landscape gardening sites in his spare time.