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Ornamental grasses, sorted.

Grasses are the easiest drama in gardening - one cut a year, almost no pests, and movement no flower can match. Here are 21 profiles from ankle-high blue domes to four-meter plumes, each with notes on season, siting and the few that need an invasive-list check first. New to grasses? Start with the ornamental grasses primer.

Ornamental Grasses

The catalog 21

Feather Reed Grass Medium (0.9-1.5 m)

Feather Reed Grass

Feather Reed Grass 'Karl Foerster' is a strictly upright, early-blooming ornamental grass whose wheat-colored plumes stand like soldiers from June to February.
Blue Fescue Small (under 0.9 m)

Blue Fescue

Blue Fescue forms a neat, silver-blue dome the size of a hedgehog that edges paths, fills gravel gardens and adds steel-blue color at ankle height.
Maiden Grass (Miscanthus) Tall (1.5 m+)

Maiden Grass (Miscanthus)

Maiden Grass is a fountain of fine arching leaves that erupts in silvery, silky plumes in autumn, just as everything else fades, then stands as bronze winter sculpture.
Switchgrass Medium (0.9-1.5 m)

Switchgrass

Switchgrass is an upright North American native whose airy seed clouds float above steel-blue or wine-red foliage, feeding songbirds, shrugging off drought, flood, salt and neglect.
Pink Muhly Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Pink Muhly Grass

Pink Muhly Grass performs the garden's best magic trick: an unassuming green tuft all summer that detonates in October into a knee-high cloud of cotton-candy pink so improbable that passers-by ask if it's real.
Japanese Forest Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Japanese Forest Grass

Japanese Forest Grass is an ornamental grass for shade: a slow, elegant cascade of bamboo-like leaves that pours over walls, pots and path edges like green (or gold) water.
Blue Oat Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Blue Oat Grass

Blue Oat Grass is blue fescue's big brother - the same steel-blue needles scaled up into a stately half-meter urchin that never needs dividing, never runs, and sends elegant oat-like flower wands arching a meter high in early summer.
Mexican Feather Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Mexican Feather Grass

Mexican Feather Grass is pure motion - the finest-textured grass in cultivation, a blonde ponytail that ripples in air no other plant even notices.
Little Bluestem Medium (0.9-1.5 m)

Little Bluestem

Little Bluestem is a knee-high North American prairie grass whose blue-green summer stems turn copper, wine and scarlet after frost and stay that way all winter.
Tufted Hair Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Tufted Hair Grass

Tufted Hair Grass throws the garden's finest veil - a dark evergreen tussock that erupts in early summer into a meter-wide shimmer of gold-green flowers so airy they read as light rather than substance.
Purple Moor Grass Medium (0.9-1.5 m)

Purple Moor Grass

Purple Moor Grass sends up see-through curtains of wiry stems that rise one to two meters yet hide nothing behind them, swaying like a beaded screen and turning pure butter-gold in autumn.
Prairie Dropseed Small (under 0.9 m)

Prairie Dropseed

Prairie Dropseed is a groundcover grass that forms a fountain of emerald hair-fine leaves, with scented seed heads (often compared to buttered popcorn) and a very long lifespan.
Japanese Sedge Small (under 0.9 m)

Japanese Sedge

Japanese Sedge gives a grass-like look to places grasses refuse: dry shade under trees, north-facing pots, dark entryways.
Black Mondo Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Black Mondo Grass

Black Mondo Grass forms near-black, strappy evergreen tufts that make neighboring plants look brighter.
Liriope (Lilyturf) Small (under 0.9 m)

Liriope (Lilyturf)

Liriope is a grass-like edging plant for shade: evergreen strappy tufts that flower like tiny purple grape-hyacinths in August, shrug off drought, root competition and neglect, and outline a path for twenty years without complaint.
Quaking Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Quaking Grass

Quaking Grass has dangling heart-shaped seed heads that tremble audibly in the slightest breeze and dry into everlasting arrangements.
Blue Grama Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Blue Grama Grass

Blue Grama's seed heads hang sideways like tiny combs or false lashes, hovering over a tough shortgrass native that survives on about 25 cm of rain a year.
Pheasant's Tail Grass Small (under 0.9 m)

Pheasant's Tail Grass

Pheasant's Tail Grass is an arching New Zealand evergreen whose olive blades streak orange, amber and red year-round, intensifying with cold and stress into a permanent autumn.
Ravenna Grass Tall (1.5 m+)

Ravenna Grass

Ravenna Grass, sometimes called 'hardy pampas', sends silvery plumes three to four meters into the October sky in cold climates where true pampas would die at the first zone-6 winter.
Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana) Tall (1.5 m+)

Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana)

Pampas grass is one of the most dramatic ornamental grasses you can grow - a huge clump of arching foliage topped with towering, feathery plumes that can reach 2-3 m or more.
Fountain Grass (Pennisetum) Medium (0.9-1.5 m)

Fountain Grass (Pennisetum)

Fountain grass is one of the most graceful and popular ornamental grasses for the garden, grown for its arching, fountain-like mounds of fine foliage and its soft, fuzzy, bottlebrush flower plumes.

Grass care in six rules

Sun first, almost always

Nearly every flopping, sparse or bloom-less grass is a shade problem. Full sun is the default; the shade exceptions are Japanese forest grass, sedges, liriope and mondo - plant those where true grasses fail.

One cut a year (know your season)

Deciduous grasses get one hard cut to 10-15 cm in late winter, before new growth. Evergreen types (fescue, blue oat, sedges, pheasant's tail) are never hard-cut - comb the dead out with gloved fingers instead.

Warm-season vs cool-season

Cool-season grasses (feather reed, fescue, tufted hair) green up early and bloom by June. Warm-season ones (miscanthus, switchgrass, muhly, bluestem) sit dormant until late spring - don't declare them dead in May.

Divide in spring, rarely

Most grasses need dividing only when centers hollow out - every 4-8 years. Do it in spring as growth resumes; autumn division risks winter rot in cold climates.

Leave them standing in winter

Plumes and stems are half the point: winter structure, frost displays, bird seed and crown protection. The cleanup happens in late winter, not fall.

Check invasive lists before planting

Mexican feather grass and ravenna grass are listed invasive in some regions, and old miscanthus cultivars self-seed in warm climates. A two-minute check of your regional invasive list beats years of pulling seedlings - when in doubt, native switchgrass, bluestem and dropseed are safe picks.

Lawn, meadow or border?

For walkable green space see the lawn & grass hub (blue grama even doubles as a no-mow eco-lawn). For beds and borders, pick from the catalog above - and check bloom timing against the bloom calendar.

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