8 Ornamental Grass For Low Maintenance Garden
Ornamental Grass deliver texture, variety, and beauty to the garden.Use them to make a background for your best flowers, or choose ones with plumes that can stand out on their own. Taller plants are great for making living walls of privacy and wind screens. Grass is easy to grow and care for, and it makes a garden more interesting by changing with the seasons. The plant has beautiful leaves in one season, beautiful flowers in the next, and a change in color in the fall as it gets ready for winter.
Most ornamental grasses either spread out or grow together in clusters. Spreading grasses are usually taller and more dramatic while clumping grasses make mounds that aren’t very high. Pick the best plant habit for your garden. Few plants can compare to ornamental grass when it comes to performance, strength, and visual impact almost all the time. The purpose of ornamental grass is to grow, not to be cut or mowed, and most are not used as ground covers. When you start using ornamental grasses to decorate your yard, you will be amazed at how many different kinds, sizes, shapes, and colors there are. You can also use ornamental grass in a container garden.Read the following to know more about common ornamental grasses.
Best Low Maintenance Ornamental Grass For Your Garden
1. Blue Fescue
Blue fescue (Festuca glauca) grows how low? Not as low as tightly sheared turf grass. Some fescues are grown as lawns, like the clumping red fescue. Turf fescues are classed as tall fescues, the seeds of which were transported to the United States from Europe in the early nineteenth century, adding to the confusion.
On the other hand, Fescues are considered low-growers in ornamental grasses and are frequently employed as edgings, borders, and ground covers. Other common ornamental fescues besides blue fescue are:
- Atlas fescue (Festuca mairei)
- California fescue (Festuca californica)
- Sheep fescue (Festuca ovina)
2. Japanese Forest Grass
Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) grows around Mt. Hakone in Japan. It is well-known for the beautiful and unusual way it grows in groups. Some cultivars, like ‘All Gold’ and ‘Aureola, have leaves that are green and gold in different places.
The thin stems of this ornamental grass that loses its leaves in the fall make it easy to spot. It looks great in pots or as a pop of color in borders, especially with darker green plants or purple flowers. It must be watered weekly or more often when the weather is hot.
3. Black mondo grass
Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ doesn’t get much taller than 8 inches, but it spreads quickly and makes a great ground cover. It’s not really black; it’s more of a dark greenish purple. This ornamental grass looks great with lavender, lime, or chartreuse plants. This ornamental grass grows best in moist, well-drained soil with a little to a lot of sunlight.
Most of the time, this ornamental grass is used to cover the ground. It also looks nice as a border along paths, between stepping stones or flowerbeds and lawns, or in rock gardens. It grows well near streams and ponds in gardens. The roots of other plants don’t hurt mondo grass much.
4. Pink Muhly Grass
Pink muhly grass is also called sweetgrass, gulf muhlygrass, mist grass, hairawn muhly, and by its scientific name, Muhlenbergia capillaris. It is named after Henry Muhlenberg, a botanist, chemist, and mineralogist.
People like this ornamental grass because it has pink flowers or plumes that look like feathers bloom in the fall and winter. Muhly grass looks best in large or mass clumps in perennial borders or native gardens, where its pink, wispy flowers make a big impression.
5. Japanese Blood Grass
Japanese blood grass, also known as Imperata cylindrica ‘Rubra,’ is a grass that grows in Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, India, Micronesia, and Melanesia. It can be in white red, yellow, and green.
Runners helped straight clumps spread slowly underground. It grows best in moist, rich soil and likes to be wet in the summer. The plant can die or fade away if the soil is too dry. Even though it is beautiful, it is considered invasive in some places. This plant is also known as cogon grass. It is like a statement piece of ornamental grass.
6.Blue Oat Grass
Blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens) can reach a height of 3 to 6 feet and a width of 1 to 3 feet. It is easy to spot because it has silver-blue blades that look like fountains and a light beige dome that shows up in the summer.
This ornamental grass needs full sun and a little water once a week. Once it is established, it can stand up to drought. The grass works well in rock gardens with succulents, native landscaping, along borders, and in large groups of plants.
7.Bamboo
People often forget that bamboo (Bambusa sp. or Phyllostachys sp. ) is actually grass. Bamboo grows tall and quickly (sometimes too quickly), and it needs to be watered regularly during its first growing season to get a deep root system going. Bamboo is from China, but people brought it to the West sometime after the middle of the 19th century.
This ornamental grass grows best in warm climates, but there are also cold-hardy types. Bamboo canes often die in winter in very cold places, but the roots stay alive. Some types stay green all year. It is best where you need long cover up fence.
8.Purple Fountain Grass
Purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’) is a very popular plant for landscaping in both homes and businesses. It looks interesting from a distance and up close with its fountain-like shape, reddish-purple color, and feathery flowers.,it’s usually grown as an annual in places with cold winters.
This ornamental grass usually grows 2 to 5 feet tall and 2 to 4 feet wide when it’s fully grown. It is thought to be low-maintenance, but that is usually because gardeners and people who take care of landscapes cut it down to about a foot high when it looks dry in late fall. This makes it look like a bale of hay that has been cut down.
If you care for purple fountain grass right, it can almost look good all year long. When the grass spreads out, and the feathery flowers look like wheat, it’s time to cut off the dead heads. The ornamental grass looks great in a garden with lime green and silver grasses and plants like oat grass and sweet potato vine. It can also withstand deer and drought once established. It looks especially nice in fall gardens and flower pot arrangements.
(Also Read- All Around Spring Lawn Care)
Conclusion
Many species of ornamental grasses are only minimally cold hardy, so it’s better to plant them in the spring.When you plant ornamental grass, make sure the bed or container is at least 36 inches deep so the roots have room to grow. This helps them be able to handle droughts better. Only compost or humus is needed to improve the soil.For the first growing season, ornamental grass need 1 inch of water each week. After that, ornamental grass can handle a lot of drought. Use a slow-release, all-purpose fertilizer to feed perennial plants in the spring. This is also a good time to break up big groups of plants that have grown too big.