Ornamental Grasses

It is very appropriate that Layanee and Shirl chose this time of the year to ask people to showcase their ornamental grasses... it's the time of the year when most of them start to come into their glory in our gardens, with fall colors and showy inflorescences. They also offer great fall and winter movement--check out this post of ornamental grass videos by Craig at Ellis Hollow to get a taste of that virtue.

When I headed outside just now to take pictures, I found that I have more grasses than I realized. With no other good way to list them, I'm going to show them from smallest to largest.

The smallest by far is a carex that I couldn't resist because it's so darn cute! These fuzzy leaves of lady's mantle show you how tiny carex conica 'Hime Kansugi' really is. You have to look over the lady's mantle and between two tall clumps of oriental lilies in order to see this grass, but it's a sweet reward:

Last year, I picked up a pot of black mondo grass that had two small plants showing. I divided them and put one in each of two containers, then planted them out in the garden in the fall. Here you see that one of the plants was happy enough to start to spread this year--I hope it continues to creep closer to the 'Jack Frost' brunnera:

Possibly my most unusual grass, carex platyphylla is a broad-leaf sedge native to the U.S. It is said to be drought-tolerant once established, but I found out the hard way that it doesn't like too much sun at all. You can see the crispy edges that remain from its early summer sunburn, but judging by the new growth it's happier now that it has been moved to a shadier spot. (Click the link above to see a less sun-damaged plant on the High Country Gardens site.)

Blue fescue that I started a few years ago from seed. I had trouble siting these until I decided to let them soften the base of a chimney tile that I set in the garden and planted with lantana. (That's not another grass, but foliage from gladiolus bulbs in the background.)

The bronze carex flagellifera has happily mingled with golden creeping jenny and other foliage plants in an urn all summer. I'm going to take it out and put it in the ground somewhere to see whether it will overwinter. It's one of those carex (carexes?) that are sometimes said to be hardy to zone 6, other times only to zone 7. You'll see two more such zone-stradlers later in this post.

Can I count liriope with the rest of my grasses? They certainly belong by all appearances, and I purchased two different variegated varieties on clearance last week, the golden l. muscari 'variegata' and the paler 'Silver Dragon':

Three clumps of the controversial carex comans 'Frosted Curls' (some say it should only be sold as c. album or c. alba, not c. comans) overwintered in my front garden this year. Three more were purchased as annuals this summer and planted under my purple ninebark in the hope that they are similarly hardy in spite of their "Zone 7" tag. Here is one of the original trio next to an 'Amber Waves' (I think?) heuchera:

I have several clumps of the red-tipped Japanese bloodgrass, but only because I actively divided the small one that was here when I arrived. I always marvel at reports of their invasiveness, because I wish that they would spread more for me than they do. Here you see the red tips of one clump, set off by the silvery carpet of woolly thyme that is cascading over the retaining wall and pooling around the feet of a blueberry bush:

There is a certain grace to the Japanese forest grasses in the genus hakonechloa. I have two, an artfully striped h. macra 'aureola' that is two years old, and a newly rescued clearance pot of h. m. 'All Gold' that already looks happier planted out in the garden amongst the 'Chocolate Chip' ajuga:

This New Zealand sedge, carex buchanii, is sometimes listed as hardy to zone 6 and sometimes only to zone 7. It overwintered in my garden, and I love the way it combines with the powdery blues of sea kale and lavender, the yellow-edged lemon thyme, and the purple leaves of 'Purple Knockout' salvia lyrata:

I think that I might need a couple of larger pennisetums to help eliminate the lawn grass in the front yard. For now, the only members of that genus that I grow are the 'Rubrum' annual fountaingrass and the smaller 'Hameln,' which resides in the drought-tolerant front garden with sedums and golden oregano:

I have shown my 'The Blues' little bluestem before, but here's another shot that shows how well it mingles with the pyracantha that is being wall-trained. I love the powdery blue foliage next to the dark green firethorn leaves anyway, but when the berries turn orange it's like frosting on the cake:

About the same size as my little bluestems are my chasmanthium latifolium, Northern Sea Oats. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of these and their gorgeous bamboo-like foliage with showy seedheads while I was outside. 'Rotstrahlbusch' panicum virgatum is said to be the "best of the red switchgrasses" in marketing materials, but I feel that a couple of other varieties like 'Shenandoah' color up much better. That said, I still like my three clumps of this grass with its airy sprays of flowers in September... but they are hard to show off in pictures, hence its absence from this post as well.

Sorghastrum nutens 'Sioux Blue' is my favorite of the taller grasses in my garden. I started with one last year and added two more this spring. The first pic shows my original plant just after I gave it some new neighbors midsummer. The second is a detail shot of its golden flowerheads, at about 5ft in height right now:

I have a regular medium-green miscanthus sinensis in the front yard garden, but here you see m. s. 'Morning Light' and 'Gold Bar' still in their pots waiting to be planted in the backyard:

By far the largest ornamental grasses I grow, most of the golden zebra grasses are either m. sinensis 'Strictus' or 'Zebrinus.' This one is from a name-unknown chunk that my aunt and uncle bequeathed to me two years ago, but I'm guessing it is 'Zebrinus' because it's not quite upright enough to be ID'd as the other.

(Layanee, really... too gaudy?!?! Say it ain't so!)

Well, that's it for my ornamental grasses tour. Not a bad tally of grasses for a lot that's just a shade above .1 acres, if I do say so myself!