Grasses
I’m recycling this post and adding some pertinent pictures because of an amazing couple of weeks – maybe month – of people asking questions about grasses.
Every year it seems we read about yet another incredibly attractive grass species. We watch as these hybridized and developed new and altered species express all that the clump grasses – and even lawn grasses – do to make themselves so appealing. Hybridized lawn grasses are in a constant search for a turf grass which won’t require using so much water to stay green and very substantial progress has been and is being made. But they are for another time. This is the Landscape Grass realm.
Landscape Grasses
(click any image to enlarge)
Comfortable small clumps such as these gorgeous small grasses shown here at the Portland Chinese Garden influence a walk, softening the impact of transitional areas and making them every bit as important to attend as the larger plants and views beyond them. Our attention begins at where we walk and it is plain to see these borders are a welcoming type.
Other grasses are hugely different – and serve different effects. The grasses below frame a Junior High School sign. As they develop, they nearly overwhelm it with silky seed fronds and the inherent yellow tints of the leaves themselves.
And, reaching larger dimensions, no grass discussion ever seems complete with mention of the Pampas Grasses we have all come to enjoy so much. Set here amid a rather stunning “All Grass” landscape design, complete with at least 3 different species comprising the entirety of this massed landscape planting, we see the effectiveness of form and structure as well as the simple beauty of the plants themselves.
Smaller grasses are equally effective when massed, as could be expected. Reliable, tough grasses survive and thrive in our landscapes requiring little outside of the odd yearly “haircut”. They are neither water or maintenance hogs, seemingly impervious to many of the diseases and problems in more delicate species. Full sun? No problem? Part sun? Take us there. Not great soil? Yum! This is an easy plant to come to like!
Some are just plain pretty all on their own, too:
And they are even nicer in numbers - in a grouping, changing the hard lines of cement planters and streets to a softer, less angular existence.
These landscape grasses can come in some startlingly understated form, small, wispy, wind-affected silk flags coming out of the ground around us. Put together they make a stunning mass of unique and surprising color.
This is my “Blond Bed”. 
Famous for their beautiful electric pink seed fronds, these “Muhley Grasses” at the entry to Yew Dell Gardens in Louisville, Kentucky, show another amazing possibility in the use of grass for color as well as form.
Easy-to-maintain, hardy and somewhat drought-tolerant, grasses of all kinds are making a monster inroad into the thinking of landscape designers. The newer varieties of these beauties are tending towards more color, more variegation, more amazing seed colors, silkier textures and just generally yet more applications within landscapes. Many of these grasses have been used even in the distant past, yet the newer stuff just keeps coming with wonderful new cultivars of impressive beauty and form.
I say keep it up.