Comments on: Ornamental Grasses and Grasslike Plants

By: flustibunfins

flustibunfins — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:01:34 +0000

Great article, amazing looking weblog, added it to my favorites.

By: ryan

ryan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:55:59 +0000

I’m afraid I’m out of my element with New Zealand. (BOP is the Bay of Plenty, right?) I spent six months on the South Island, but never made it to the North. So I don’t know which ones thrive there. I like a lot of the New Zealand carex species, but I don’t know which part they are from. Berkeley sedge, Carex divulsa aka Carex tumicola, is really nice, about a foot tall, green, and sometimes used as a groundcover/rough lawn, but I don’t know how it does up there. Sorry I can’t give any more help than that. Good luck.

By: Pam Eagles

Pam Eagles — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:21:52 +0000

Hi Ryan
Great site, maybe you can help me, we are about to plant a grass ground cover for easy maintainence. We live right on the coast in the BOP. What grass would you think suitable?

Cheers P

By: ryan

ryan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:43:16 +0000

This blog needs more garden rhymes. I like the alternative version “grasses have nodes all the way to the ground,” better than the version I knew.
I don’t know the restios well at all, though they seem to be becoming more common. I’ve seen some nice ones but I’ve also seen some invasive ones, so I haven’t really experimented. I know they’re not all invasive, so we’ll probably get into them at some point.
I’ve never even heard of Melinus or Setaria. I know a few of the ubiquitous South African plants and a few lesser-known favorites, but I don’t know much about the bulk of them. I wish there were more garden bloggers in South Africa writing about them, because a lot of them do well here and I’d like to know more about them.
Hellstrip is the name for the strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the street. Also known as a parkway in some of the books, but for me a parkway is a highway, so I’ve been sticking with hellstrip. I thought it was a widely known term, but it’s starting to seem like it’s unique to Anita and I.

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:53:10 +0000

Hey Ryan, great post! I’ve never heard that rhyme before, but its a great simple way to pick up the differences.
I love using grasses in gardens – two of my favourites are Melinis nerviglumis, and Setaria megaphylla – but I doubt that you’re likely to find many pictures of them?

BTW, what are hell-strips?

By: lostlandscape(James)

lostlandscape(James) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:51:47 +0000

Great post. I knew there were morphological differences between these plants but hadn’t ever looked into it more.

The feather grass is one of those serious love/hate relationships for me. A lot of published projects are using it more and more, which means it’ll be in even more and more home landscapes before long. I almost regret planting 2 plants 10+ years ago because I’d have hundreds if I didn’t keep after the plants in places where I don’t want them.

Another grass-like family that I’m getting into is the restios. Some are as drought-tolerant as the dryland grasses (e.g. Thamnochortus insignis). They’re still not that common in the trade. I’ve been growing some short ones from seed to replace my blue fescues, but it’ll be a year before they’re ready–nothing like the more vigorous feather grasses.