Ornamental Grasses

Some of the plants in our garden that never fail to please are the ornamental grasses. They are well suited to our exposed front garden, where we have several including the Golden Oats (Stipa gigantea). One of my favourites, the plant has made a huge clump of long, narrow leaves and is full of graceful flower panicles at the moment. The plant looks very boring in the winter and early spring, when it is a tangled mass of leaves, before the new growth has started. I put on a stout pair of gloves and ‘groom’ out the dead, yellow leaves in early spring to tidy the clump which soon begins to grow away with fresh green leaves appearing in the center. In late spring, as if from nowhere, thick flower stems push up from the clump and open to airy flowers that waft in the breeze and are very long lasting. Eventually they will turn golden yellow adding to the autumnal feel of the late summer garden. I have grown this grass in a container and it is equally pleasing and easy to keep on the patio as well as in the ground.

Another grass that does really well is the aptly named Molinia ‘Skyracer’ which appears from underground in late spring and literally races upwards creating a strong vertical column of deep green. The flower heads are slender panicles of reddish brown and adorn the tops of the plants held well above the leaves on wiry stems. They begin to appear in late summer and defy even the strongest gusts of wind, flexing and springing back upright unharmed. But the plant is not done with interest yet and perhaps its finest hour is autumn, when the whole thing takes on deep golden orange colours before collapsing in a heap in early winter. No pruning required – the resulting pile of leaves can be removed and added to the compost heap leaving the crown of the plant safely tucked underground through the hardest of the weather.

The evergreen Carex tend to be short lived, but many self seed gently and we have a small colony of the silver green Carex ‘Frosted Curls’ which is doing a great job of covering the ground in a dry, shady spot. The wind really hits the house here when it blows and as a result, the plants are tufty mounds growing to only a few centimetres high, creating a sort of Japanese garden effect.

I have found that most of the perennial grasses do not seed madly – there are of course the odd exceptions including the Pheasant Tail Grass (Calamagrostis arundinacea), but they are shallow rooted and easily pulled out once they have been spotted. I wish the same could be said for the annual grasses, which by their nature have to seed to survive!

Utterly charming to look at is Annual Quaking Grass (Briza maxima) with drooping clusters of heart shaped flowers so loved by Mrs McGregor for her flower arrangements. Luckily, the coarse barley like leaves are a giveaway that the plant is on the move after the winter, when the seeds from last year’s flowers begin to germinate. Once you have Annual Quaking Grass, you have it in your garden for life unless you are very ruthless with weed killers and the like. We have a ‘Quaking Grass management programme’ which consists of several runs, through the spring and summer, over the front garden to thin out the number of seedlings, confine it to certain areas and remove most of the plants as the flowers begin to fade and before they drop seed! It is for now, under control but not allowed in the back garden at all!