Fall Spectacular - Ornamental Grasses

Ornamental grasses for the masses

By Amy McDowell

Rippling gently in the breeze and shimmering in the sunshine, ornamental grasses enliven landscapes in late summer and fall. Grasses come in every size, shape and color, and the plethora of choices may overwhelm browsing shoppers at the garden center.

If you’ve got room in the garden for just a couple of grasses, plant a feather reed grass (Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’) for its striking upright growth and compliment it with the rounded growth of a fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’). Karl Foerster feather reed grass grows five feet tall and has dark burgundy seed heads in the summer that fade to beige in the fall. The mounded ‘Hameln’ fountain grass grows two feet tall and has pinkish-brown foxtail-like seed heads.

Regardless how much space you have in the garden, ornamental grasses soon get to be like so many new garden adventures—addictive. Soon you’ll want to experiment with the broad palette of different colors.

For white variegation, consider ribbon grass (Phalaris arundinacea), which tops out around two and a half feet. Striped feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Overdam’) is roughly the same height with burgundy seed heads in the summer like ‘Karl Foerster’. Miscanthus sinensis ‘Variegatus’ has creamy white variegation and a rounded four-foot grass.

For yellow variegation, plant Alopecurus pratensis ‘Aureovariegatus’ or golden hakone grass (Hakonenchloa macra ‘Alboaurea’). Alopecurus grows upright to about one foot and has bright yellow variegation in the spring and red-brown foxtails. Golden hakone grass needs some shade, where the floppy golden grass looks terrific with blue hostas. It grows about 18 inches tall.

Everyone who grows annual purple fountain grass wishes it were a perennial, and the way plant hybridizers work, it won’t be long before we see it. In the meantime, the best red grass that will survive our winters is Japanese blood grass (Imperata cylindrica ‘Rubra’). It isn’t as striking as purple fountain grass, but its green leaves are streaked with blood red edges and tips.

Finally, ornamental grasses can add crisp blues to the garden. Blue fescues are the best known, but they require well-drained soil in order to survive our winters. Grasses are tough perennials and killing a blue fescue with heavy soil is aggravating. Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’ is a sharp blue-gray grass that grows to three feet. It has arching leaves and airy panicles of burgundy seed heads.

Don’t be afraid to dabble with ornamental grasses. Betcha can’t plant just one.

Amy McDowell is an Iowa Certified Nursery Professional. She has a degree in horticulture and has worked in the field for ten years. She lives and gardens in Polk County, Iowa, United States.