I TOOK A BREAK FROM CUTTING BACK PERENNIALS and arranging nursery pots for winter storage to travel down to NYC to tour The High Line in late November. Walking in this elevated urban garden with colleague Patrick Cullina, High Line VP of Horticulture, was therapeutic, and really got me thinking about how much I love and rely on grasses like the giant Miscanthus and Calamagrostis brachytricha (above).
Nostalgic for the greens and rainbow flower colors of the season just past, I was energized by the tawny, brown and straw-colored ornamental grasses and fading asters at the High Line (above). Here and there the wiry, still-green stems of Molinia caerulea cultivars (purple moor grass) etched the plant compositions. These magical borders were particularly edgy against leaden, misty skies in fading afternoon light. I needed this dose of artful plant design before the inevitable distractions of trees laden with LED holiday lights, air-inflated snowmen, and WINTER.
Back at Loomis Creek, my appreciation for our own grass borders is rekindled. Red-fruited colonies of Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Red’ (winterberry holly) corralled in a sea of brown Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ (switch grass) are electric. In the distance, the russet needles of Taxodium distichum (bald cypress) growing happily along Loomis Creek casts distinct shape and presence. I am reminded that brown in all of its tints and hues is the unheralded color of the season.
Ornamental grasses (that’s Calamagrostis brachytricha to the left of Panicum virgatum ‘Dallas Blues,’ above) are one of Andrew’s and my specialties at Loomis Creek and we use them freely and creatively in our design work. Requests for naturalistic grass borders and meadow plantings has clearly been on the rise this fall. We are glad to see gardeners embracing this garden style in the Hudson Valley–particularly in Columbia County, where grasses seem a natural fit in our rolling, pastoral landscape. Some thoughts about using them:
- Grasses are great low-maintenance plants and only need to be cut back to the ground once a season.
- We let sturdy-stemmed, warm-season grasses (Miscanthus, Panicum) stand through winter; cool-season grasses that push new foliage early in the spring (Calamagrostis) are cut back now.
- Chasmanthium latifolium (northern sea oats) offers tawny dangling seed heads in winter gardens. It freely reseeds, so give it room.
- Miscanthus x giganteus at 12-foot-tall (top photo) makes the biggest winter statement in Loomis Creek borders. It’s a customer favorite.
- Grasses offer a wide range of foliage color; they’re not just green!
Comments on this entry are closed.