Blowing in the breeze

Create your own meadow by combining ornamental grasses and flowering plants.

- Marié Brody

Ornamental grasses provide movement, texture and a source of food for wildlife in your garden. In addition, they require very little maintenance and are Waterwise.

“Grasses are easy to grow and add great value to a garden or a bed,” says Stellenbosch gardener and plant lover Pietman Diener. “They require little effort to grow – all that’s needed is for them to be cut back to ground level at the end of winter. They also need less water than many other plants. They are a bonus for birds, who use the grass stalks as nesting material and feed on their seeds throughout winter.”

Inspiration from nature

“If you use ornamental grasses in the majority of a garden or bed, they will create a meadow feel,” explains Pietman. Complementary flowering plants in-between provide colour and variety.

To create a meadow look, choose one or two grasses for the major part of the bed or garden, with flowering plants and another grass species or two in-between for variety.

“Look to nature for inspiration,” he says. “In a fynbos grassland, arum lilies and chincherinchee are the perfect foil for grasses, while garden red-hot pokers and cosmos will create a Free State grassland look. “Ornamental grasses can also form just a part of a garden’s plant palette, and are included for texture, contrast and movement. In this instance, they don’t dominate like they do in a grassland. Rather, you group together just three to five similar grasses in-between other plants in a bed, or use only a single specimen of a larger-growing grass species.”

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