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Indian River County Extension Service 1028 20th Pl, Suite D Vero Beach, FL 32960 772-770-5030 Indian@mail.ifas.ufl.edu |
Daniel F. Culbert, County Extension Director Press Release Date November 3, 2002
Indian River County Agriculture Extension Service
NOT ALL GRASSES ARE
FOR TURF
Grasses are for lawns, right? Not so, according to Robert Bowden - who has spent many years working with them, but not around the football field. He is the Director of the City of Orlando’s Leu Gardens. I had the privilege to introduce him to last week’s 22nd annual Florida Master Gardener Training Conference at the University of Florida. His informative program on ornamental grasses for Florida is the basis for today’s column.
Ornamental grasses are becoming popular additions to our Florida Yards, and according to Bowden, are likely to add excitement to local landscapes. They can provide dramatic differences in form, texture and color, and if chosen correctly, are easy to maintain. Many of these featured plants can also handle drought or excessive rainfall.
These are not your typical mowed grasses, but are plants than can
range from six inches to fourteen feet
in height. Ornamental
grasses can be used in Florida Yards as accent plants, ground covers, border
edging, and can even screen out undesirable views.
They can grow as clumps or can spread like their turfgrass cousins,
providing for different landscape effects.
In combination with other plants or flowers, ornamental grasses can
be the right plant for the right place.
Their foliage can range in color among the many possible shades of
green. Some kinds of leaves are
colored with shades of blue, red, brown, or may even be striped with white
variegations. The flower spikes
or seed heads can be attractive in their own right, with colors and textures
that appear at specific times of the year.
And, they can add sound
to the landscape as breezes move through the dried foliage and seed heads.
Rustling leaves can add a audible appeal to landscapes as long as the
urge to clip dead or dormant leaves is kept under control.
Growing ornamental grasses
These accent plants grow from either seed or by dividing up the
clumps. They do not transplant
or propagate well after midsummer. For most of these grasses, dead foliage should not be
cut down to the ground until mid spring.
Mr. Bowden suggests that late spring shearings may be accomplished by
the use of a machete or, if the stems are real woody, consider a chain saw.
There are some things to be careful when adding ornamental grasses to your Florida Yard: if the plant spreads by runners (called rhizomes), place these specimens where their spread can be confined, such as in a planter box or in an area surrounded by sidewalks. More popular kinds of ornamental grasses are the clumpers that increase by suckering. These grasses may require division every two to three years to encourage vigorous new growth.
Ornamental Grasses for Indian River Yards
Many
of the ornamental grasses that are popular in other areas are not well adapted
to our local climatic conditions. Below
is a short list of suggestions from Mr. Bowden that should work for our local
landscapes; I’d recommend that you ask for them by the botanical name, and
the common names differ from place to place.
• Reed grass (Arundo donax) is a giant grass that can towers to five or more feet in height. While it may be invasive due to its running habit, in Bowden’s experiences, is does not escape. A variegated form also exists, and another species (A. formasanais) with more graceful habits, has been used as part of I-4 roadside plantings in Orlando.
•
Wild Oats (Chasmanthium
latifolium)is a short clumping grass
than works well under South Florida
conditions. The seed heads look a
bit like that of oats, and for locals, it’s seed may remind us of a smaller
version of our native beachfront Sea oats.
•
Pampas Grass (Cordedaria
selloana) is a popular ornamental grass that has several different
cultivars. Silver Comet is a form
that has variegated leaves, but it lacks the signature plume-like seed head
found on conventional cultivars. Most
Pampas grasses become too tall in the landscapes, and can become a fire hazard
and can harbor palmetto bugs if placed too close to buildings.
There are dwarf cultivars of Pampas grass under development that will
only reach five feet in height. And
since they don’t do well in alkaline soils, consider using these grasses in
containers.
•
Wild Rye (Elymus
magellanicus) is a beautiful clumping grass that reaches up to 18 inches
in height. It likes a little
shade, and is best adapted to areas north of our area, but it may he useful as
a short term accent in our area.
•
Japanese
Blood Grass (Imperata
sp.)“Red
Baron” may be mentioned as a possible ornamental grass, but it should not
be planted in our area. It behaves much like the roadside weed, Cogongrass, a
real invasive challenge to control in roadsides and natural areas.
•
Cosmopolitan
(Miscanthus
sinensis) forms five foot tall clumps with outstanding variegated foliage. Most ornamental grasses with variegated foliage suffer from a
fungal disease called rust, which shortens the life of these specimen plants.
•
Crown Grass (Paspalum
quadrifolium) is a native of Uruguay that exhibits differences in color
depending upon the site conditions. In
dry sites, it takes on a bluish cast; in wet areas it will appear more dark
green in color. At some recent commercial sites in Central Florida, Crown
grass has been used to imitate rice plants.
•
Panicum grasses (Panicum
spp.) can also be quite large with thick reed-like stems. Cloud Nine is a loosely upright five foot tall cultivar with
a bluish cast, while the taller Panicum cultivar called Heavy Metal is much
more upright. They have not been
evaluated for their tolerance to high pH soils, so be sure to know if you have
alkaline soils. There are several other panicums found in our area that are a
bit too weedy for landscape use.
•
Purple Fountain Grass (
Pennestum setaceum ‘Rubrum’) is
probably the most overused ornamental grass in our local landscapes.
When the leaves turn brown, withhold any additional fertilizer or
water. ‘Burgundy Giant’ is a cultivar that can get three to five
foot tall, and is topped by foxtail like seed heads. It does not have any cold tolerance.
I’ve hope to display some of these specimens at our upcoming WETFEST program, to be held Saturday November 16th, 10-4 at Riverside Park. Additional information on ornamental grasses is available at our office. If you need additional information on these wonderful accent plants, call or stop by our office. For other questions about Florida Yards, our office holds Master Gardener Clinic hours at the Extension office (1028 20th Place, Suite D, Vero Beach) during office hours, Wednesday morning at the North County Library in Sebastian, and the second and fourth Saturday of the month at the Environmental Learning Center. Our phone number is 770-5030, and you can email us at indian@ifas.ufl.edu.
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REFERENCES
Black, Bob. Pampas Grass (Dr. Bob’s Gardening Tips) Florida Cooperative Extension Service. October 2002. http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/gt/pampas/pampas.htm
Bowden, Robert. Ornamental grasses (On-line Horticultural Guide.) http://www.leugardens.org/moregrdn.html
Ornamental Grasses. (University of Illinois Urban Extension Programs home page) http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/grasses/
Schmidt, Steve. Desirable
traits of ornamental grasses. (American
Ornamental Perennials home page) http://www.gramineae.com/plant.htm
Simon, Richard. THE USE OF ORNAMENTAL GRASSES IN THE LANDSCAPE (Virginia Tech Turfgrass and Horticulture Field Days proceedings) http://sudan.cses.vt.edu/html/Turf/orngrass.htm