Guides / Grasses

Grasses

Ornamental and meadow grasses.

Illustration of pampas grass

B

Big Bluestem
Andropogon gerardii
Practical guidance for growing big bluestem, Andropogon gerardii, including its deep prairie roots, turkeyfoot seed heads, warm-season growth, drought tolerance, and non-toxic status.
Easy
Black Bamboo
Phyllostachys nigra
How to grow black bamboo. Why a running bamboo needs a barrier before it needs anything else, how to install one properly, the legal risk of letting it spread, and how the canes turn black.
Moderate

C

Common Bamboo
Bambusa vulgaris
How to grow Bambusa vulgaris. The tropical clumping bamboo behind most of the world's bamboo construction, why it will not survive a temperate winter outdoors, and what to grow instead.
Moderate

F

G

Giant Reed
Arundo donax
Practical guidance for growing giant reed, Arundo donax, including its rapid rhizome spread, screening and biomass use, invasive status in some regions, containment, and low toxicity.
Easy

P

Q

Quaking Grass
Briza media
Practical guidance for growing quaking grass, Briza media, including its trembling heart-shaped spikelets, poor thin soil, self-seeding, dried flower arrangements, and its lack of barbed awns.
Easy

T

Tufted Hair-Grass
Deschampsia cespitosa
How to grow tufted hair-grass, Deschampsia cespitosa. Why it tolerates full shade when most ornamental grasses need sun, combing out dead leaves rather than cutting the clump back, and the humid summer heat that stresses it far more than any frost.
Easy

U

Umbrella Bamboo
Fargesia murielae
How to grow Fargesia murielae, the umbrella bamboo. The clump-forming bamboo that cannot run, why almost every plant on Earth flowered and died in the 1990s, and where it beats Phyllostachys.
Easy