Why we’re putting pampas out to grass

It was racy and, for some, the height of sophistication. Now the tall South American grass has fallen out of favour – and rightly so, says Debora Robertson

When I was growing up, there was a couple in our village who wore matching sheepskin jackets, walked matching Afghan hounds and drank Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, which they ordered specially – some might say ostentatiously – from the village shop. To my eight-year-old eyes, they seemed impossibly glamorous. I sensed, as children often do, that the grown-ups didn’t think this rural Burton and Taylor, this bucolic Barbie and Ken, were quite so fabulous.

They had pampas grass in the middle of their front lawn for a start which was, apparently, A Terrible Thing. Far more dreadful than the matching coats, dogs and coffee affectation, there was something sinister about the fronds.

As an adult, I now understand what might have inspired the raised eyebrows over the teacups and sherry schooners, and it has nothing to do with the Blue Mountain. Since the Seventies, rumours have persisted that a clump of pampas in your front garden indicates you are swingers. It is a rumour of dubious veracity – in fact there is no evidence that it’s true at all – but still pampas retains a reputation as a permanent, if retro, horticultural swipe right on Tinder. If the fronds are a-frothin, do come a-knockin, and all that.

It’s possibly this racy reputation that has done for pampas, now cruelly cast out from the gardens of Esher, Oxshott and other suburban Shangri-las. Sales have plummeted in the past 10 years, with some nurseries declining to stock it at all.

A decade ago, Palmstead Nurseries in Ashford, Kent, sold an average of 550 plants a year. Now they sell fewer than 250. Nick Coslett, the company’s marketing manager, explains it may have fallen out of favour because of its frolicksome rep. “I’ve got no evidence that it was ever actually used for that… But there is that connotation, unfortunately.”

True or not, the unaware continue to fall victim to pampas’s sexy signalling. A few years ago, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup was horrified when a friend explained its significance to her. “Who knew?” she wrote on Twitter, “that pampas grass plants are a signal to fellow swingers? Bought two and put them on my balcony. Neighbours have been swarming.”

Fellow broadcaster Esther Rantzen also unwittingly harboured the sexy beast in her garden, grubbing it up when she realised its notoriety for indicating liberal sexual attitudes. She remarked waspishly, “There’s an awful lot of pampas grass in Luton,” – the town that had recently failed to elect her as MP.

It’s entirely possible that perversion was simpler back then. Without the boundless possibilities created by the internet and dating apps, people made use of what they had. Step forward that other favourite sexy-time Seventies myth, about frisky housewives placing a box of Omo washing powder in the window – to indicate “Old Man Out”, geddit?

But the truth is there’s probably a more prosaic explanation for why – at a time when, thanks to Dutch garden design superstar, Piet Oudolf, grasses have never been more chic – pampas has fallen out of favour. It could be because it’s hideous.

Poor unlovely and unloved pampas – Cortaderia selloana to its hardcore fans – is a native of South America, named after the Pampas region of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. As such, it grows best in well drained, fertile soil in full sun. Should you be fortunate enough, in your Elysian corner of Radlett, Cheadle or Weybridge, to have such wonderful growing conditions, why

would you waste them on this charmless interloper? Anyone with an ounce of joy in their hearts would certainly cultivate all manner of exquisitely beautiful plants in its place.

If you put a pampas plant in a spot where it is comfortable then, like a bad boyfriend, you will find it fiendishly difficult to get rid of. It’s a greedy pig and does not share, growing up to

2.4 metres tall and bullying everything around it into submission. Its leaves are laceratingly sharp and you can’t even kill it with fire. Seriously – burning is a recommended method of pruning. Like a malevolent phoenix, it will simply come back from the flames. It has all the allure of astroturf and the timeless mystery of a newly Tarmac’d road.

As for the flowers – more correctly, panicles – they hang around for ages, until they possess slightly less charm than a set of grubby net curtains.

There’s no one with more affection for a bit of retro than me. Lounging on an Ercol sofa in a broderie anglaise peasant blouse while listening to a bit of Abba on the stereo? Bring it on. Tending my spider plant in its macramé holder? Sure. But pampas – along with Spam fritters and Vesta beef curries – can stay firmly in the Seventies, where it belongs.