Grasses

Ornamental grasses bring many qualities to the garden and are a very useful perennial to the designer; they allow both design opportunities and practical opportunities. They provide verticality and atmosphere to a garden design and can be used to screen areas, and bring a translucent quality to any garden as they catch and play with the light.

 

Grasses provide a group of plants that gracefully ebb and flow with the seasons, often giving nine months of interest before they are pruned with the clippers. They are relatively simple and easy to maintain. Care needs to be taken with some species to prevent self seeding.

 

Ornamental grasses as a garden design material were scarcely perceptible at the commencement of the century. There are recordings of the occasional ornamental grass in the fourteenth century monasteries but the official first recording occurs in the 1782 catalogue of John Kingston Galpine, who was a seedsman and nurseryman of Blandford in Dorset, England. Later William Robinson's edition The English Flower Garden (1883) records some thirty ornamental grasses. Gertrude Jekyll frequently used them in her herbaceous borders.

 

It was actually the German nurseryman Karl Foerster who championed the ornamental grass as he realised the importance of grasses to an all season garden. Ornamental grasses continue to gain momentum as new grasses continue to be collected from around the world.