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by
Ann Milovsoroff
photos: Roger Yip |
Splendour
in the Grass |
| They’re
animated, easy to grow and graceful in all seasons—just
the tonic your garden needs |
Ornamental grasses have been used in gardens since before the
Renaissance—and are currently enjoying another. This is
not surprising, given today’s enthusiasm for low-maintenance
gardens and an increasing awareness of the environmental benefits
of native plants. Varied in form, scale and texture—from
ground-hugging to gigantic, from thread-fine to spiky to pillow-soft—grasses
thrive in difficult areas such as steep slopes or poor soils.
Many look good grown in pots and require less care than annuals.
Their design potential is most exciting for creating structure
and atmosphere in the garden.
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ABOVE:
Miscanthus sinensis 'Graziella'
BELOW: a Chasmanthium latifolium seedhead |
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Grasses
are beautiful in all seasons, undulating in the wind and catching
and playing with the light. Some, such as plume grass (Saccharum
ravennae), are best grown as specimen or single plants;
others, such as hakone grass (Hakonechloa) or dropseed
(Sporobolus), show to best advantage when grouped. A
number have distinctive summer colour or variegation, and most
have excellent fall and winter colour. The taller ones usually
hold their form right through the winter and pair well with
conifers such as yew, cedar and juniper. In spring, their delicate
new growth is lovely as a backdrop for late-blooming bulbs,
while in early summer they provide a foil and filler for perennials
and annuals. On frosty fall mornings, grasses sparkle in the
long, low sunshine. But mid- to late summer is their prime time,
when they mediate and make richer the strong yellows of daisy-like
perennials.
In
new gardens, grasses anchor and give shape to empty space, growing
to nearly their full height in their first season, but are easily
moved when slower-growing woody plants are acquired. They can
define a boundary, screen a patio or window for privacy, separate
garden areas or create a secret place for children. They’re
also handsome backdrops for other plants and make excellent
groundcover in sun or shade, as Gertrude Jekyll pointed out
a century ago. Planted in groups, fountain grass (Pennisetum
spp.), moor grass (Sesleria spp.) and Prairie dropseed
(Sporobolus heterolepis)—native from Quebec to Saskatchewan
and south—make no-care borders, while sedge (Carex
spp.) and ornamental fescues (Festuca spp.) create excellent
no-mow lawns; F. ovina is effective when used for green
roofs. Miscanthus sinensis ‘Silberspinne’,
attractive as a single clump, is positively magical in late
July when planted as a long, dense hedge—a sinuous chorus
line moving in the wind.
| EVERYTHING
OLD IS NEW AGAIN |
Ribbon
grass (Phalaris arundinacea ‘Picta’) and
Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi) are mentioned
in 14th-century herbals. Native feather grass (Stipa
pennata) is listed as an ornamental in a 1782 nursery
catalogue in Dorset, England. Ornamental grasses
brought home by plant hunters in the 19th century
were used in Victorian gardens to give them an exotic
look. In his classic book The English Flower Garden
(1883), William Robinson lists 30 ornamental grasses.
The famed British designer Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932)
used ornamental grasses frequently and was the first
to write about their use in garden designs. We still
copy her signature plantings of big grasses and
grass relatives.
There’s a long
tradition of North American plants being discovered
by Europeans and eventually coming back into fashion
on this side of the Atlantic. By the middle of the
20th century, grasses were being showcased in the
nursery gardens of innovative plantsman Karl Foerster,
who emphasized their importance in creating all-season
gardens. Many of his selections were North American
natives. His experiments with natural associations
of perennials and grasses that prefer similar growing
conditions influenced the next generation of horticulturists
and designers, including Wolfgang Oehme, Kurt Bluemel
and Ernst Pagels, who found and developed many modern
ornamental grass, sedge and rush cultivars. |
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Though
grasses have been used in European garden plans for centuries,
they really caught on as a design medium in North America in
the 1970s, when Washington, D.C., landscape architects Wolfgang
Oehme and James Van
Sweden revolutionized planting ideas with their planting designs
for residences and public buildings. They used grasses as a
graphic medium, planted with low-maintenance perennials and
naturalized bulbs to create stunning blocks of form and colour.
Oehme and Van Sweden called their innovative style the new American
Garden, and their plantings, which are still a delight, inspired
innumerable copies. So how do you adapt these ideas for your
garden?
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PART 1 | PART 2
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