Add Grasses To Your Garden

If you want perpetual motion and plants willing to go beyond their best, even in the depths of winter, you have to add grasses to your garden.

Grasses can mean different things to different people. Some will call them weeds; others will call them fodder for domestic and wild animals. Ecologists will remind us that grasses play an important roll as soil stabilisers and soil protectors. This is due to their typical growth form, which protects the soil from wind and rain erosion.

For a gardener it can mean low-maintenance, a compatibility with other perennials and focal plants, extremely good looks supplying interesting textures and colours for many months and a fairly cheap option to vegetate large areas.

For the well-known Dutch landscape architect and plantsman Piet Oudolf, they supply the ‘full seasonal spectrum’. He says: “A plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it is dead.” And by this he means the winter look of grasses full of dry seed heads and dry leaves. To rejuvenate them, they need to be cut back to start the whole visual performance all over again in spring.

Veld Grasses

If all of the above sounds a tad dramatic, just think about the effect that veld grasses have had in your life before. Have you ever turned down an unknown gravel road and stopped to touch the soft plumes of a hare’s tail (Lagurus ovatus) which caught your eye? Did you perhaps once buy a broom made of Ngongoni three-awn grass (Aristida junciformis) from a farm stall? We bet you shed a tear in thankfulness when seeing the first veld grasses sprouting with renewed vigour after a big veld fire or a long drought! Did you not as a kid pluck a stem from a clump of veld grass to suck on its sweet end or tickled a friend playfully with a downy plume?

Grasses Can Be Used In Many Ways

As hedges and screens, if they are tall and sturdy species; along pathways; minimalistic in linear and formal designs – using only one type of grass; in meadow-like borders with perennials and bulbs peeking through them; as soft edging to compliment the bolder elements of focal shrubs; to accentuate garden art like sculptures and fountains; to grace water elements; and to stabilise slopes.

READ MORE: Find out more about the importance of grasses here!

Feel Like Trying It Too?

If you are now convinced to plant lots of grasses and want to start with species that are readily available (they never were before) we give you a few choices here. But there are many more…

Indigenous

Aristida junciformis
This grass is very attractive, hardy and thickly tufted grass with copious seed heads. It is mauve in summer, then it slowly turns yellow. Tolerates all kinds of soil and grows 60cm.

Melinis nerviglumis
Bristle leaved red top grass is a very hardy tufted grass with grey leaves and beautiful plumes of shiny and fluffy pink to red seeds. Full sun and light shade. Size 35 x 80cm.

Hyparrhenia tamba
Blue thatching grass is a very hardy and impressive tall grass with blue leaves displaying yellow and red hues too. The tangled flower heads and seeds have a turquoise hue. Good for full sun to light shade and can reach a height of 2,5m.

Exotic

Miscanthus sinensis ‘Variegatus’
A dense, grassy clump over 1m tall and about 2m wide with a fountain-like habit. Reed-like, tall flowering stems appear from late spring. These carry beautiful dark pink or coppery plumes that remain on the plant until late autumn. Then they eventually fade to a creamy colour.

Carex comans ‘Bronze’
Very hardy New Zealand hair sedge with a richly textured bronze colour year-round. Size 50 x 50cm.

Acorus gramineus ‘Golden Edge’
Beautiful golden-yellow and green striped foliage. This grass is perfect for shady areas and boggy soil, although it will tolerate full sun too. It is cold-hardy, but should be protected against frost. Size 30 x 30cm.

How To Plant And Care For Grasses

• Rid the area of weeds and prepare the soil well with compost and a slow-releasing general fertiliser.
• Planting distances will depend on the type of grass you have picked – small to medium size clumps can be planted 5 to a square meter. Bigger grasses can be planted 3 per square meter.
• Mulch the plants well after planting to keep weeds at bay.
• Water newly planted grasses regularly at first to enable them to get well established.
• They can be fed every 6 to 8 weeks from spring to autumn with 7:1:3 lawn and leaf fertiliser.
• Cut them back in July by removing two-thirds of the old thatch, leaving a third behind. Rake up the old thatch and re-apply the layer of mulch.

READ MORE: Find out about Carex grasses!