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Ornamental Grasses - Sparkling Fountains in the Drought

© Carol Wallace

OK, so we haven't exactly been visited by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But you've got to admit, it's been a tough year for gardening. And tough years for gardening are years when you really come to appreciate the real jewels of the garden. The tough plants. The indestructible ones. The undemanding ones that look terrific even though you have totally ignored them.

The jewels in my garden this summer were the ornamental grasses.

I wouldn't call them totally trouble free - you do have to cut them back in late winter - which can be quite a task with some of my giant clumps of miscanthus and pennisetum. But all winter their tawny blades lent presence to the garden - and by cutting back time I am ready for any chore that will let me go out and tell myself I'm gardening. So I become grateful for my grasses quite early in the year. Anyway - next time I'm going to try burning instead of cutting.

Then there is that period where you watch other things grow and have to look at the stubble from the bad haircut you gave them. But that's not too terrible either, because in spring there is so much else going on - and lots of other favorites are also just promises yet to be fulfilled.

But then they begin to grow - and the pleasure begins. First I admire the way they move in the wind. This is something you can enjoy even at night, because the breeze rustling through the tall grasses is like no other sound in the garden.

Then I fall in love all over again with the way the sunlight glints off the silver stripe in my Miscanthus sinensis 'Gracillimus', and the way my Miscanthus sinensis 'Puenktchen' a smaller form of zebra grass, looks as though it were splashed with sunlight. I grow a lot of miscanthus - they seem to collect me.

There are few sights more stunning than that of a mature fountain grass ( Pennisetum alopecuroides,) with its plumes waving gaily across the pond from the gazebo in the night lighting. Or the tremble of the little squirrels' tails of Hordeum jubatum as the lights caught it. Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum', planted in an urn so that the sun shines through the deep purple blades is unforgettable. And to me the trembling flat seedheads of the Northern sea oats are irresistible.