🌿 Elegant, Fresh & Fuss-Free
Elegant, fresh and fuss-free, ornamental Grasses are a garden essential whatever style or design of garden, whether it’s cottage, contemporary, wildlife-friendly, coastal or gravel, working in well with mixed flower borders or as a stand-alone feature.
🌬️ Movement, Texture & Wildlife
Ornamental grasses come in a large variety of colours, size and forms with sumptuous textures bringing gentle movement to the garden as they sway in the breeze. As they generally grow in a ‘clumping’ form grasses are ideal for groundcover, although a few have rhizomes which will spread, and many are heat-tolerant so able to withstand long hot summers. Grasses also attract wildlife like butterflies, who use the grasses as host plants for their larvae, and seed-eating birds enjoy dining out on the seed produced by the grasses in Autumn, and the fluffy tassels provide ideal nesting material.
🌿 Indigenous Varieties
Indigenous varieties of grasses available include the Eragrostis Superba (Love Grass) which is a hardy, graceful weeping grass, and the Melinis Repens (Natal Redtop), with grey/green leaves and fluffy plumes of pink, also the Aristida Junciformis which thrives in full sun and has feathery seed heads of green and light brown. The indigenous restios like Elegia Tectorum (Cape Thatching reed) has dark green stems with spikes of brown plumes.
🌱 Low-Growing Choices
Low-growing grasses are ideal for front of borders like the attractive Festuca Glauca (Blue fescue), with gorgeous blue foliage, or the dramatic Black Mondo grass (Ophiopogon Planiscapis ‘Nigrensens) along with Bronze Curls.
🌾 Tall & Striking Varieties
Tall varieties of grass include Miscanthus Sinensis, also known as Zebra Grass owing to its variegated creamy/white leaves and copper-coloured plumes. The Japanese Blood grass has stunning red leaves, also Melinus Repens and Imperata Cylindricon ‘Rubra’.
☀️ Growing Conditions
Ornamental grasses can be evergreen, providing year round interest or deciduous, which can be cut down and divided in Spring. A free-draining soil in sun or semi-shade is preferable for grasses to thrive. Grasses can also be grown singly in containers or mixed with colourful plants for an attractive long-lasting display on a patio.
