For Movement, Shape And Colour Try Glorious Grasses

Graceful, undemanding and easy to fit into any garden, grasses are the perfect partners to perennial flowers. Isn’t it time you gave them a go, says Tamsin Westhorpe

- Tamsin Westhorpe

At this time of year, when you think about planting partners for late-summer flowers, it’s hard not to think of grasses. The fillers that hold together a border of perennials, they will temper hot colours and harmonise clashing ones, providing soft pillows of foliage and flowers.

Grasses add movement, shape and colour to a garden, and are one of the few groups of plants that can be touched without damaging them (watch out for the sharp-leaved pampas grass!), which makes them ideal for sensory planting. Little wonder they are now so popular.

According to Neil Lucas, owner of specialist grass nursery Knoll Gardens, they’re easy to grow, too. “Grasses offer more wow and less work,” he says. “Gardeners are beginning to understand that there is grass for every situation, whatever sort of garden they have.”

Sun or shade

For shade, there are the hakonechloas, and for sun Pennisetum sp. You also have the choice of annuals or perennials (short- or long-lived), and deciduous or evergreen types. As an annual, great quaking grass (Briza maxima) lasts just a single spring and summer, whereas miscanthus or Pennisetum can live for well over a decade.

You could be forgiven for thinking that grasses are only suitable for large spaces. Piet Oudolf’s famed naturalistic planting schemes are lovely, but what if your plot is more petite and less prairie? According to Neil, the principles can be applied to even the tiniest of gardens. “The trick is to use just a few types of grasses and perennials,” he explains.