Bold as GRASS!
It’s not just the leaves putting on a show at this time of year – grasses offer a blaze of colour that brightens up autumn days, says Monty Don
AUTUMN can be a radiant time of year. Rain and wi n d are our enemies, because everything is fragile, with leaves and flowers hanging on by threads. But if we have a dry f ew weeks, autumn can give us a final blaze of colour.
But whatever happens to the foliage, autumn is my favourite season for grasses. They can seem to be burnished with gold, silver and bronze in a way that no other group of plants can possibly match.
We have made four large beds that were formerly part of the Jewel Garden into Grass Borders. The planting is dictated and dominated by grasses and everything else chosen to work with, around and – importantly – through them. It took me a while to work out how to best manage them in a mixed border containing a range of bulbs, perennials, shrubs and annuals, so here are a few grassy thoughts based on my own experience.
I love the stipa family. Stipa gigantea is big but never overwhelming because the stems are delicate and do not screen plants behind, so it can be placed anywhere in a border. Its oaten heads are fired into the air like tracer trails. It likes light and air, so don’t plant it in a group. It doesn’t like wet, heavy soil, or being moved, as it has shallow roots that take a while to recover from the shock.
Stipa arundinacea, or pheasant’s tail grass, has leaves shot with pinks and russets, and hairy flowers that flop and fall everywhere. Unlike its gigantic cousin, it moves easily and seedlings are easy to pot up, grow on and replant. However, it has a habit of suddenly dying for no reason.
Stipa tenuissima is delicate, dramatic and good for the front of the border. It has amazing longevity and likes the poorer, better-drained soil of the Dry Garden.
The miscanthus family performs exactly as required: they are tough, need very l i ttle support and, although drought-tolerant, will perform well in soggy conditions. They invariably have good autumn colour and are upright and elegant, so are good for the middle or back of a border. Miscanthus sinensis ‘Silberfeder’ has pinkish flowerheads that take a silver turn in autumn. ‘Malepartus’ has flowers that are plum plumed and open out with a golden thread. It will grow in any soil or position. ‘Ferner
Osten’ has early, russet flowers and is adaptable in a border. ‘Purpurascens’ has the best orange-bronze foliage of all grasses, but needs moisture.
I have two favourites among the delicate grasses. Deschampsia cespitosa ‘ Golden Dew’ has flowerheads that gently jangle with gold. It likes the Damp Garden. The other is a moor grass, Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Windspiel’. It has oaten heads on elegant golden stems that gently move with the wind – and selfprune by snapping off at the end of winter. Happiest in acidic bog, it will grow almost anywhere.
Some grasses can be too much of a good thing. Panicum miliaceum ‘Violaceum’ has seeds that hang like a plum-coloured mane. Easy to grow and move, it seeds itself so freely and quickly that it can become annoying.
Quaking grass (Briza maxima) is the same, so we have stopped growing it. Lyme grass (Leymus arenarius), with its fabulous blue foliage, is notoriously invasive but too good to ignore. It looks great in the Dry Garden mixed with sedums and Verbena bonariensis, but once it gets established it’s a devil of a job to get it out again.