HANDY SMALL GRASSES TO SQUEEZE INTO GAPS IN POTS NOW
Grasses can give tired or empty-looking pots an instant lift and also make great patio features planted on their own in a single pot. Tall grasses planted this way can be moved around the patio to provide a backdrop for other pots or provide a screen or feature around a seating area. Mix and match and get creative!
Evergreen carex ‘Everillo’ is a highimpact grass with bright, lime-green blades that gently fall over pot edges. The colour ages to a more golden hue by autumn. Best in a semi-shaded spot and growing to around 40cm tall, it’s a good choice to plant in front of tall plants in a pot. It’s best in a compost mix that doesn’t dry out quickly. For something darker and more dramatic, evergreen, variegated uncinia ‘Everflame’ is an unmissable mix of bronze and deep red for full sun in pots that drain well and is very ‘well behaved’, staying to a compact 40cm wide and tall. To add something different and colourful to a succulent or Mediterraneanlooking container, try Festuca glauca for a fountain of greyish blue to mix with sedums and echeverias. It grows to 30cm tall and across and produces a silhouette like a firework when its blue flower spikes stand tall in summer. It’s best in a sunny, well-drained position.
For a gap at the back of a mixed container in full sun, consider Stipa tenuissima. Its graceful shape and frothy flower heads look spectacular when lit up by low sun and offer a simple but effective alternative to shrubs as container ‘backbone’ plants. Spread a grit mulch on top of the compost after planting to help water drain away. It grows to around 60cm tall.
Growing grasses in pots also gives you the chance to provide the ideal conditions for plants that struggle in heavy soil or cold winters. Add equal parts grit, multi-purpose compost and soil-based compost for grasses that aren’t completely hardy, and move the pots to a sheltered corner during the coldest months.
These taller grasses will make an instant impact in your garden before giving a glorious multi-coloured autumn colour show. Try planting them somewhere west facing so low sun can shine through them and light up the flower heads and their beautiful silhouettes can be admired at the end of the day.
Miscanthus ‘Purpurascens’ is an autumn beauty with its mix of bronze, orange, pink and red. Despite being a tall plant (up to 1.5m), it’s useful for relatively small border gaps because it’s a very upright plant, and its spread can be controlled by regular division in early spring. Another spectacular miscanthus for colour is ‘Indian Summer’. Its feathery seed heads are a fine late-summer feature and they’re lit up in autumn by a backdrop of bronze-red foliage moving into autumn. It grows to 1.5m tall. Grow miscanthus in full sun and well-drained soil.
If you have a gravel garden or a sunny, sheltered spot in soil that drains very well in winter, try pennisetum ‘Fireworks’ (height: 1.5m). It puts on a spectacular show of intense colour in summer, with gently arching strands of maroon and light pink, with eyecatching ‘bottlebrush’ flowerheads in the same colour towards the end of summer. The colour is best in full sun. Spread a mulch of dry compost around the base of the plant at the end of autumn to help it survive the winter. Panicum virgatum
‘Rehbraun’ is shorter (around 1m tall) but similarly colourful in full sun, with purple-red tips to the foliage as autumn arrives and clouds of purplegreen provided by its wispy, late-summer seed heads.