Favourite Ornamental Grasses: Part 1

I am a sucker for a clearance sale. 

Back in early July, I worked my way into a throng of bargain hunters encircling a big cart of closeout plants at my local Loblaw garden centre. The big attraction? The $1.99 price tag!

The selection of perennials on the clearance cart was telling. Almost everything was an ornamental grass of some kind. Why had spring shoppers passed on these plants?

I think the answer is simple: an ornamental grass in a small nursery pot is profoundly unsexy. Shoppers are more attracted to plants with blooms (even I fall pray to this). There is just one problem with a purchase based on this criteria. If you buy only nursery plants in bloom, your garden will be full of June flowers with little to provide interest come late summer and fall. 

Choosing plants based on bloom overlooks the hidden potential that ornamental grasses have in spades! In the golden light of mid to late August, the magic begins and continues well into winter.

Annual Fountain Grass in a Brampton Civic park.

Annual Fountain Grass in a Brampton Civic park.

Switch Grass, Panicum virgatum

Korean Feather Reed Grass, Calamagrostis brachytricha at the TBG.

A mix of perennials and grasses at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Marion Jarvie's garden in Thornhill, Ontario.

Switch Grass, Panicum virgatum at the TBG.

Even into winter ornamental grasses have a haunting beauty.

Korean Feather Reed Grass, Calamagrostis brachytricha

An ornamental grass makes a neutral backdrop for Rudbeckia 

seed heads at the TBG. 

The other reason I think that grasses get left behind at the nursery, is that gardeners still have difficulty knowing how to use them. Ornamental grasses have really surged in popularity in recent years, but some of us still struggle to incorporate them in with other perennials (myself included).

I was looking through my library of pictures for this post, when I happened upon this garden. Seeing it again with fresh eyes (originally photographed it in 2014) I was reminded how cleverly this gardener used ornamental grasses. They are dotted in amongst the flowers all through the garden. Short grasses are down front, while taller grasses work like small shrubs.

See more of this garden here.

In June, the clumps of ornamental grasses are somewhat understated, but by late summer I bet they steal the show!

Rideau Woodland Ramble Nursery Display Garden

Punctuating a mixed flowerbed with grasses is just one way to go. Massing grasses together is yet another approach.

Two different varieties of Miscanthus grass at the Rideau 

Woodland Ramble Nursery Display Garden.

Large clumps of Miscanthus at the Terra Nursery Display Garden

Terra Nursery Display Garden

One final set of inspirations as to uses of ornamental grasses. Think of them as shrubs and mix them in with perennials, other shrubs and conifers. The result is very textural.

A variegated Miscanthus at the Lost Horizons Nursery Display Garden

A Miscanthus works like a shrub in the this corner planting.

Marion Jarvie's garden in Thornhill, Ontario.

Marion Jarvie's garden in Thornhill, Ontario.

In part 2, we'll take a closer look at some of my favourite ornamental grasses.