Low Maintenance Ornamental Grasses

Add motion, texture and year round interest to your landscape with ornamental grasses. Use these low maintenance beauties to add vertical interest, a focal point or unity to a garden. Since they are great in formal, informal and natural settings you’re sure to find one or more suited to your landscape design.

Most ornamental grasses grow best in full sun and well-drained soil and are drought tolerant once established. Many will tolerate poor, even clay soil and salt. Plus, the deer and rabbits tend to pass them by.

You will find native as well as cultivated grasses for the landscape. Look for the cultivar that best fits the space available and your design. Sizes vary from about a foot to 15 feet tall.

Cultivars of some of our natives like little bluestem and switchgrass have been selected for improved performance and growth habit for home gardens.

A bit more information: The North American native little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) is tough and adaptable. A recent introduction, Jazz, is only 2 feet tall and won’t fall over. Use it as a native replacement for blue oat grass. Blue Heaven was bred to be upright and non-flopping. Smoke Signal is upright with blue-green leaves that take on scarlet red tones in the late summer turning red-purple in the fall.