fall grasses

Why not try Tridens?

In full flower now at JLBG is the longspike tridens, aka: Tridens stricta ‘Buffalo Feathers’. Athough native from NC west to Texas, the genetics of our clump hails from a Wade Roitsch (Yucca Do) collection in Lee County, Texas, and is superior ornamentally in both form and longevity. We have found this little-known ornamental grass

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Elliot’s Eragrostis

Flowering this month in our parking lot dryland garden is the true Eragrostis elliottii. Back in 1999, we introduced a plant under that name, which had been identified as that species by a Florida taxonomist. Well, it turned out to be the South African Eragrostis chloromelas that’s now being sold nationwide as Eragrostis ‘Wind Dancer’.

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You bet your a…, it’s a great grass.

Below is our SC collection of Andropogon glaucopsis, looking outstanding in the garden this week. This native gem can be found growing in swamps, scattered from SC through much of the gulf coast. We’re testing its adaptability to non-bog settings, and so far, it’s doing amazingly well. For years, this was considered a subspecies of

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Playing with Colors, Textures, and Form

Here’s an example from JLBG, of how plant colors, textures, and forms can be used to create a garden vignette. The foreground is Tradescantia pallida (purple), Berberis thunbergii ‘Sunjoy Gold Beret’, Colocasia ‘Coal Miner’, Pennisetum orientale ‘Tall Tails’, and Albizia julibrissin ‘Chocolate Fountain’. The frame is backed with Vitex agnus-castus ‘Sensational’.

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Getting Pinked

Now that fall has arrived, we’re all enjoying peak plume season for many of our favorite ornamental grasses. Unfortunately, there are a few significant mix-ups in the trade. The top photo is our native Eragrostis spectabilis, known as purple love grass. I’ve long admired this beautiful, but short-lived native, but have declined to offer it

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Opening up a Mis-can-thus of worms

Flowering this week at JLBG is the amazing Miscanthus transmorrisonensis. Many gardeners, who blindly believe everything they read/hear think the genus miscanthus is the horticultural version of the devil itself. Like everything in life, it’s all about those pesky details, which so many people simply don’t want to be bothered with. Most miscanthus in the

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Bushy Muhly

I fell in love with the Arizona/Mexico native ornamental grass, Muhlenbergia dumosa when the the late JC Raulston first brought it back from Yucca Do Nursery in 1992. This odd member of the genus muhlenbergia resembles a clumping bamboo unlike other members of the genus. For those non-connoisseurs of Latin, dumosa means “bushy”. JC touted

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It’s a grass, don’t panic…umm

Late summer and fall are a great time to enjoy the plumes of our US native ornamental grass, Panicum virgatum. Here are two photos from the garden this week. The first is one of my favorites, the giant Panicum ‘Cloud 9’…an introduction from Maryland’s defunct Bluemount Nursery. Below this is a new dwarf, blue-foliage introduction

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