Ornamental Grasses (Which I Have to Look Up Every Single Time)
Okay. I have to be honest with you right up front on this one, because if I fake confidence about grasses and you catch me later, I'll feel bad about it.
I cannot keep ornamental grasses straight by name. Blue grama, little bluestem, blue avena, blue fescue — they're all blue-something and I get them mixed up every single time. I keep a note in my phone. I've had that note for two years. I still look it up. So if you're the kind of person who feels dumb for not knowing plant names by heart, welcome, you're in good company, I teach this class and I still Google it in the nursery parking lot.
What I DO know, and what actually matters more than the name, is what grasses do for a dry-adapted bed and why I think everybody's front yard could use one or two.
Why bother with grasses at all
Most of what we've talked about in this course has been flowers — yarrow, penstemon, globemallow, rabbitbrush. Grasses do something different. They move. They catch the evening light in a way nothing else in a xeric bed does. And in August, when your blanketflower is looking tired and your penstemon bloom is long over, a good grass is often still looking decent. That's the test I use for everything I plant now — not "is it pretty in May," because anybody can be pretty in May. Is it doing something in August. Grasses usually pass that test better than almost anything else on this list.
They also do quiet work in the bed. Their roots hold soil. Their texture breaks up what would otherwise be a yard of round shrub-blobs — I say that with love, I have a yard of round shrub-blobs — and gives your eye somewhere different to land.
What to actually look for, since I can't help you with names
Here's my system, since names aren't reliable for me. I look for three things on the tag:
Size at maturity. Same rule as everything else we've covered — check the mature width, not the size of the pot. Grasses especially will surprise you. A little wisp of a thing in a quart pot can turn into a three-foot mophead in two summers. Buy small, like I always tell you, but know what small is going to become.
Cool-season or warm-season. This is the one grass-specific thing worth learning. Cool-season grasses green up early, look great in spring, and can go a little sulky in the hottest part of summer. Warm-season grasses are slow to start in spring — don't panic if they look half-dead in May — but they're the ones still standing proud in August heat when everything else is limp. For our valley, with our summers, I lean warm-season for anything I want to count on for that late-summer show. Read the tag. If it doesn't say, ask whoever's selling it to you. That's a fair question and a good nursery worker will know.
Sun and water needs, same as always. Some grasses labeled "drought tolerant" still want a decent drink through the first summer to get established, and some genuinely don't care once they're in. Read the actual plant, not just the section of the nursery it was sitting in.
The mistake I made with these, and it's the same one I keep making
I want to circle back to something because it applies directly to grasses and I learned it the hard way with blanketflower, not grasses, but the lesson transfers completely.
I lost a whole planting of blanketflower my first winter because I'd amended the hole with good rich soil from a bag, the nice stuff, because I thought I was helping. Turns out blanketflower wanted the lousy native dirt it evolved in, and all that rich amended soil held water around the roots and rotted them out over winter. Humbling. I mean that.
Grasses are the same story, maybe worse. A lot of ornamental grasses — the drought-tolerant ones especially — actually prefer lean, poor soil. Rich soil makes them grow soft and floppy and less likely to survive our winters, which, if you've been in this class a while, you already know is my whole soapbox. Don't dump compost in the hole. Plant it in the dirt you've got, maybe loosen it up a bit so roots can get through, and let the grass figure out its own life. It wants to struggle a little. That's what makes it tough.
A simple way to start
If you want to try one grass this year, here's what I'd do at home:
- Pick ONE grass, not five, until you know how it behaves in your yard.
- Buy it small — quart or one-gallon.
- Plant it in unamended soil, in a spot with good drainage, full sun for most of the warm-season types.
- Water it like a new plant through its first summer — regularly, not daily — then back way off the second year.
- Leave the dead top growth standing through winter. It looks a little rough, I know, but it protects the crown from our cold snaps and honestly a lot of grasses look good even dried out, catching frost in the morning.
- Cut it back hard in early spring before new growth starts. That's the one maintenance chore they really ask for.
One real caution, since we're talking about cutting them back: those dried grass blades can be sharper than you'd expect, almost like paper cuts times ten. Wear gloves and long sleeves when you're cutting a big clump down, and if you're using shears or a trimmer, mind your footing, because dry grass clumps get slippery underfoot.
Before next time
Go look at one grass at a nursery or in a neighbor's yard, take a picture of the tag if there is one, and just start your own list like I did. You don't have to know the names. You just have to start noticing them.