Ornamental Grasses

Ornamental grasses offer year-round interest and beauty and they can make such a strong design statement!

Pampas Grass and Dahlias

There is a variety of shapes and sizes and they are such easy plants to take care of. And when it comes to the blade colors: lime green, silver, burgundy, deep green... so many possibilities to play with in your garden design.

They are great to add height and background to a flower bed, to screen, as fillers or front edging and as a focal plant they can hold their own.

Ponds, streams or even formal water features somehow do not look complete without some ornamental grasses in the vicinity. The dwarf types especially, are great to soften hard edges.

Do consider them for your rock garden designs too! They are easy to contain within a specified area - let them fill, cascade, tower...

Planting them en-masse is the perfect solution for large areas where you want visual interest, but low maintenance. Within one grass species you may find such a variety of colors: solids, variegated etc. which you can arrange in specific areas to create an almost flower-bed look.

You don't need particularly rich soil for many of these beautiful grasses to thrive. In fact, most of them do very well in average soil and are quite drought resistant too.

They must be the most versatile groups of plants and we'll showcase a couple of ornamental grasses here, which may just find a way into your garden too.

Zebra Grass (Miscanthus Sinensis)

The best time to plant them will be during early spring and young plants do need regular watering until well-established.

Most of the grasses need 6-8 hours of sun per day but will still do well in spots which are in shade in the afternoons.

Liriope Evergreen Giant and
Phormium Pink Stripes (New Zealand Flax)

Leave long stalks to add interest to your garden during winter and cut back dead stalks in early spring.

Keep an eye on grasses that have been in the same spot for a couple of seasons: as they spread on the outside, they may die out or become sparse in the middle.

Dig out the whole clump, divide it into sections and replant healthy sections again at the same depth. Water in well.

They rustle, sway with such elegant movements and some produce the most gorgeous plumes.

We hope our enthusiasm for ornamental grasses will inspire you too!

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