Why Ornamental Grasses Are the Secret to a Beautiful Border in 2024

Ornamental grasses add light and movement to a border and they have an incredibly long season of interest, going from summer right through to autumn or fall, through the winter and then you cut them down in the spring. But many of us are unsure how to use ornamental grasses in our borders. I'm certainly not very sure myself. It's Alexandra from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel and blog and I went down to see Paul Seaborne of Pelham Plants who's got a cottage garden adjacent to the Pelham Plants nursery and he is passionate about ornamental grasses and he's shown me six different types of ornamental grasses, how you would position them and how you would look after them. These are all the major groups of ornamental grasses and you may not have the specific variety that Paul shows in the video, however you will have a variety available to you and they're hardy across a wide range of zones and climates, so I'll put their hardness up on screen. You're combining grasses with actually quite traditional sort of herbaceous planting, what would you advise people? People are quite nervous of using grasses, so what would you advise there? I love using grasses, I've got so many through the garden, I love the textural change. For me, a border that is full of big flowers, maybe of similar structures, I find very crowded and I like to just open up the border a bit. I personally think very carefully about where to use a grass to the extent if I were designing a new border, I would probably choose the grass first and I might choose an evergreen grass where I'm going to see it a lot or walk past it a lot in winter. I might choose something tall like Stypa gigantea where it's going to be backlit of an evening or a morning and I might sit and see it just glowing as the sun sets. I might choose something pencil thin and narrow like Calamagrostis carlforster as a punctuation through an otherwise soft or floppy border. Other grasses like the Haconicloas or Penicetums I think add texture and contrast to the brighter colours and foliage effects of other plants and I think they calm it down and it's very useful. I think it's almost like a sorbet between courses that just softens the entire look and doesn't make it too busy. So if I wanted to grow a Stypa like this what would I need to know? Well this is a wonderful form of Stypa gigantea called Golda Fontana, it's a very tall form, very vigorous, always flowers at a young age. I recommend this for even the small garden or a small area of a garden and contrary to people's expectations, just because it's tall doesn't mean to say it should be at the back. You'll see I've planted this on a corner, we literally have to brush past it, we have to climb through it almost and there's a seating area where we look through it so I want it near the front of a border. It's very versatile for almost any garden soil, it loves a sunny position. The seed heads are actually spent, there's no seeds on there anymore but those spent cases of seeds will stay on right the way through the winter if I allow them. So you've got such a long season of interest from very early summer right the way through until the autumn and I think it's such a versatile grass and makes such an impact. This one's about five or six years old so you get a big evergreen dome of foliage and multiple flower stems each year but it's well worth it I think to to enjoy that on the corner of a border somewhere as a statement. Is it very fragile? I mean it's fine if your dog goes rushing no it's so it's a really tough grass if given the right conditions and we do get a lot of wind here but you can see it the thick stems can cope with that no problem at all. Okay so this is a very famous grass isn't it, so how would I use it in my garden? Yeah this is an incredibly important grass that designers use all the time, it's Calamagrostis acutiflora, it's known for its bolt upright habit pencil narrow shape and it's really good for punctuation planting through a border and this border I tend to view from one end or the other there's a path running along it and you're kind of walking between pillars almost in the garden and actually you've reminded me originally I did have evergreen shrubby pillars in here but I found that they dominated the border too much they were too hungry too thirsty and actually to use the grass as a punctuation point which is an equal match in hunger and thirst for the other herbaceous perennials you can get that structural element punctuating through a border without the harshness of the evergreen shrub. With this, is it an evergreen? Do you cut it down to the ground in spring or do you have to filter it out? Yeah it does need cutting back but rather like the Stypa gigantea it's got an incredibly long season of interest so there is foliage at the base that's evergreen it would emerge and flower in early summer with a narrow pinky plume on the top but that very quickly turns to a buff color and goes straw-like through autumn into winter it might start to collapse a bit in the storms of winter but it would generally stay upright until you cut it and I cut it generally in spring just before the new growth emerges so it's got an incredibly long season you know it's most of the summer you've got something there to punctuate the garden. And do you cut it right down to the base? Yeah. So it's really easy? It's dead easy I mean I use a hedge trimmer on a big clump it's just yeah and it's done. So we have miscanthus here now if I was to put miscanthus in my garden what would your advice be? Well I don't want you to be put off because this looks enormous this is my one of my favorite parts of the garden this is miscanthus called yakushima dwarf it's a lovely compact height at about four foot is dwarfing for a miscanthus some of them are very tall and upright I've grown this as a hedge really to create a wind break for the border unlike the hedges which can dominate and drink a border dry this is on equal par with all my tall perennials just on the other side and of course we're now late summer and this looks fantastic it's glowing it's very tactile miscanthus is very versatile and very low maintenance all you need to do is to cut it down to the ground at some point I do mine in spring just before the regrowth starts and you have a wonderful winter silhouette here I'm using it as a hedge but that's quite unusual on a smaller scale you could use it as a punctuation a corner as a statement almost and you've got a miscanthus sinensis of every height you could possibly need in the garden there are some very miniature ones now but there are some enormous tall ones they generally would be considered a warm season grass that is they flower in the latter half of the year but I think they make an incredible statement here in late summer yeah they're wonderful absolutely now this is a really transparent grass isn't it in fact people can probably hardly see it so how would I how would you use this in a garden well you can see here I've put it on a corner so you have to brush past it I want to use this to emphasize its transparency it's actually called millennia transparent it's a cultivar that's known for its open waywardness its see-through you can see plants wherever you are it doesn't block anything it doesn't screen anything out so it almost adds to the joy of the plants around millennias are quite versatile plants they're a form of a native this one is is very tall I think it looks best on the front edge because you can see through it and you can see everything it doesn't create that barrier and in terms of looking after it what sort of care does it need again almost no maintenance at all what tends to happen in this garden with a millennia is in autumn we get these beautiful butter yellow tones and then the first really hard frost that we get in late autumn will shatter the the stems and they'll just collapse and then you just simply sweep it up and get ready for next year yeah so it's not a grass that takes you through winter but it's fabulous for several months in the summer exactly there are other grasses that will provide you with better winter structure and this isn't one of them but to get the freshness that you get you need that vigor you need the the glossy green color at this time of year and you will enjoy the butter color in autumn but it will collapse and disappear in winter yeah and I think we need to look at penicetum don't we we do now penicetum now this is another really useful grass isn't it so tell me what we'd need to know if we had it in our garden yeah there's a penicetum are beautiful often called feather grasses or fountain grasses there's a huge range of them this one is a late summer flowering form this is penicetum alopecarioides black beauty you can see the darkness of the flowers just beginning to emerge and you've got the pollen just appearing on there we've timed it just right looks beautiful with a little bit of light rain on it like today this is a bit of a this grass it wants to be on the front edge or wants to dominate its position and you need some soft planting around it we've got a verbena that's popped up nearby we've got crocosmians nearby it needs good light to encourage the flowering but it also needs a good depth of soil it can be quite a thirsty plant but penicetum alopecarioides is a really good plant a stocky stout plant for a statement in late summer early autumn and when it comes to say would most penicetums be like that you know want quite a lot of moisture and be a bit stocky so if somebody hasn't got this particular variety they would that's the sort of thing you would expect from a penicetum there's a number of different species from which varieties have been created that will suit almost any garden situation we also grow here penicetum orientale hybrids which flower earlier in the year they'll flower in June and July they cope much better with a lighter soil they're less thirsty less lumpy much more easy to use in the middle of a border or you might go for something like penicetum villosum villosum means hairy and you get these fluffy caterpillars and droopy shapes and that can create quite a statement and again it's very versatile in where you can put it and again flowers earlier in the year so you don't have to wait for an autumn grass like this one there's often other grasses that will suit the position in your garden better and once again looking after this is it just to cut down once a year yeah to the ground yeah a lot of these grasses are not evergreen the ones we've discussed today all require being cut hard to the ground i think in a very very cold garden i would consider with some of the grasses not necessarily this one but i would consider not cutting it too hard too early because that can let the frost into the core of the plant but all of them it's just a simple cut back and a large plant like this i use a hedge trimmer with i've got a grass which is an anemone lessoniana the pheasant's tail grass and that's i think semi evergreen now can i cut that right back to the base or will that be a problem i wouldn't recommend it that that's one of the ones where you can weaken the entire grass by doing it i leave that as almost an evergreen grass it's got a beautiful autumn color to it if it starts to get a little bit scrappy i might comb through it in autumn and i either use gloves to do it by hand if it's a small plant or you could even use a garden rake and that will take out some of the thatch of the older leaves if you were to cut it all off you will weaken the entire plant and there are a number of other grasses like that there's a number in the carex family that i wouldn't cut everything off it could weaken the entire plant it tends to be the deciduous ones but don't forget even though that sounds like you lose the grass the benefit of having a deciduous grass is that you both have probably striking autumn colors that you wouldn't get with an evergreen and you also get the lush fresh growth in the spring and i think that's one of the benefits of these grasses well i also think cutting it down to the base in spring is a nice easy thing to do and i'm not sure a lot easier than easier than combing through mine so hackenacloa macra which i love i have never managed to grow i think probably i'm overcrowding it when i plant it but what do we need to know about hackenacloa macra if we want to have it successful yeah i grow it quite successfully here in the garden but i think the overcrowding issue is an important one it's a quite a soft low growing grass that wouldn't want to be dominated by other shade plants i think it's suited to shade it comes from japanese woodland it needs a sheltered spot i grow it here in the garden behind a hedge underneath a shrub and it's very capable of coping with quite dry conditions and the the bright shade that it gets is very good for the foliage it doesn't dry out but i think if we allowed some of the other perhaps ground cover plants to dominate it the foliage plants i've got here like astrantias or some of the ferns if they shaded it out too much it would weaken the plant and actually one of the best ways i find to grow the hackenacloa is in pots because of the dry tolerance it can survive in a large clay or metal planter for a long period of time and creates a wonderful almost hair like dome and it's a very soft effect for a shady sheltered corner in the garden of course while you're thinking about your border it's probably a good idea to revisit the basic principles of how to create a beautiful border so don't miss this video coming up next and thank you for watching goodbye