Creating Stunning Landscapes with Ornamental Grasses: Expert Tips from a Landscape Designer
Drought tolerant and colorful N.E. Portland front yard boasts ornamental grasses like Blue Fescue.
As a landscape designer, one of my favorite elements to incorporate into a garden is ornamental grasses. Not only do they provide year-round interest, but they are also incredibly low maintenance and many are drought-tolerant. Grasses visually tie the plants in the garden together and add a calming influence.
I’m excited to share some insights and tips on using grasses in Portland landscapes and how to keep them looking their best. The grasses I am talking about today are available at most garden nurseries and are perfect for creating a striking, low-maintenance landscape.
Fescue Grass: Elegance in Blue
Festuca glauca – Blue fescue is a stunning choice for any landscape. It’s soft blue hued blades add a touch of elegance and contrast, especially when paired with vibrant perennials like sedums. (They work with so many low water plantings.) Here are some important tips you need to keep your fescue looking its best:
- Planting: Space them further apart than you might think – at least 24 to 30 inches. This allows them to grow and shine without overcrowding. Low ground cover plants (under 5 inches) can be planted close by and creep right up to the grass.
- Maintenance: Mostly, you’ll just need to comb out the dead foliage in the spring with the occasional spruce up as needed. When they get too big or start getting floppy, split them (very few people do this anymore), or just replace them entirely. They typically look great for about 3 -5 years assuming you didn’t overwater or over fertilize them which can cause rapid growth. I’ve never fertilized mine.
- Water Needs: Once established, fescue has low water needs. Figure out how you will water this area much less than other areas of your landscape. If you can’t cut back the water using your irrigation system without damaging other plantings, try re configuring your overhead spray irrigation or close off the section of drip tube by replacing it with tube that has no holes in it. (The term ‘established’ means the plant has been in one place for a full year or two.)
- How to Kill this Plant: Water it every day in the summer, over fertilize it, or plant it in a low place where winter water will puddle which will cause root rot.
- Companion Plants: In this garden I used sedums, hens and chicks, and lower water perennials like Rudbeckia (black eyed susan) which are excellent companions. The low sedums and succulents fill in around the grasses and add bursts of color. Other low water perennials such as colorful salvias, penstemons and blanket flower (Gaillardia) work well as do dwarf pines or other low water dwarf conifers.
Low Maintenance Reality
Even though you may need to replace fescue every 3-4 years, I still consider them low maintenance. Sometimes I use fescue as a temporary planting, removing them once long term plantings such as dwarf evergreen shrubs have filled in and reached a more mature size. Other times I deliberately use fescue for the long term vision with the client knowing they will be planning to replace them as needed.
- For a new gardener this may seem like a lot of work but most garden centers sell Festuca glauca, Blue Fescue varieties that mature in the 8″ to 12″ tall size. They are very easy to find and buy replacements, and are very easy to plant too.
- Here are 3 varieties with different shades of blue:
- ‘Boulder Blue’
- ‘Elijah’s Blue’
- ‘Beyond Blue’ chalky white blue 8″ to 12″
Additionally,
- Festuca idahoensis x glauca ‘Siskiyou Blue’ 18″ to 24″ tall lasts longer in the landscape if it receives low to no summer water and no fertilizer, but it has a much more wild appearance than the varieties of blue fescue listed above. Additionally Festuca roemeri var romeri and Festuca californica var californica are more eco-friendly choices but might look too wild for traditionally residential landscapes. They are a perfect fit for planting under our grand native Oregon White Oak, support a variety of beneficial insects and pollinators making native a very eco-friendly choice.
Continue reading about Portland low maintenance ornamental grasses in the garden in our upcoming Part 2.
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Hilary and I love plants. We love making planting combinations that work well together both from a cultural needs and visual spice point of view. Our knowledge can integrate your landscape plantings and take them to a new level of attractiveness and durability.
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