Ornamental Grasses Are Low Maintenance Plants!

Our favorite ways to use Ornamental Grasses:

• For privacy 
• To define property lines
• Soften corners
• Create interest within a landscape
• Small grasses make good border plants
• Great backdrop plantings
• Create informal hedges 

Ornamental Grasses

Planting a Small Sized Garden

When you don’t have the budget or inclination to do the landscaping projects you really should do, downsize. Downsize with smaller landscapes and smaller plants. Small sized gardens can be used effectively to enhance bland foundations, corners, and entrances as well as add color, fragrance and interest to patios and other sitting areas.

Small gardens use small scale shrubs and perennials. Anchor shrubs should mature around 3 to 4 feet tall and are typically placed in the back 1/3 of the area. Planting one or two evergreen shrubs makes a good base. Colorful small shrubs and shrub-like perennials are other good choices.


Small garden anchor plants:

• Boxwood Winter Gem
• Boxwood Wintergreen
• Nandina Firepower
• Sungold Cypress
• Sunjoy Gold Pillar Barberry
• Sunny Abelia Anniversary
• Pink Micro Chip Butterfly Bush
• Tuff Stuff Dwarf Hydrangea
• OSO Easy Double Red Rose

Karley Rose, Prairie Dropseed, Karl Foerster and Adagio are some of the more striking ornamental grasses that are attractive as single specimens and can be used in lieu shrubs as anchor plants.


Plant perennial plants of varied heights keeping within 12 to 40 inches tall for added interest. Some of the friendliest and brightest varieties are:

• Lo & Behold Blue Chip Buddleia
• Lavender (Munstead, Hidcote & Kew Red)
• Pineapple Sage
• Walker’s Low Catmint
• Echinacea Day Dream (yellow) & Hot Lava (orangey red)
• Purple Dome Aster
• Heucheras Plum Pudding & Mystic Angel
• Gaillardias Arizona Sun & Burgundy
• Monardas Fireball & Blue Stocking
• Veronicas Red Fox & Sunny Border Blue
• Little Spire Russian Sage
• Hostas
• Ferns

Small scale ground cover plants are the last touch for small gardens.
Select from:

• Creeping rosemary
• Corsican Mint
• Elfin Thyme
• Red Creeping Thyme
• Blue Star Creeper (Laurentia)
• Big Blue Liriope

Use spreading plants that have a spreading habit to fill in over several years such as:

• Red Drift Rose and Apricot Drift Rose 
• Rudbeckia Autumn Colors
• Moonshine Yarrow
• Shasta Daisy Crazy Daisy
• Dianthus Firewitch

How to plan a small sized garden for your enjoyment:

• Select at least one small scale shrub to anchor the garden
• Choose 3 or more perennials in varied heights
• Use one variety of groundcover for the front most part
• For even more interest add a bird feeder or whirligig just off the center point

Garden Parties to Wedding Favors - Plants as Gifts

Spring is THE time to plant in much of the United States. Any earlier or
later and it becomes off-season in either the North or South.

Garden Parties, which were common during the Victorian Period, can run the
gamut from a dressy afternoon tea to everyone arriving in their gardening
ware to help work in the hostess's garden. The garden party is, also, an
excellent idea to bring people together for gardening clubs, a wedding
shower or for the first time homeowner. Each guest brings a plant (small
shrubs, ornamental grasses or other perennials) and a tool, or other piece
of gardening equipment, whether new or a gift from the guest's own tool
shed.

For parties with gift exchanges, guests can bring items relating to
gardening such as a plant, tool, container, garden ornament, etc... The
hostess will need to somewhat define what types of items that guests should
bring such as indoor, outdoor, flowering, non-flowering, tools, etc.

One way of giving away plants as favors is to use small potted plants on the
tables as all or part of the table decorations or tiny potted plants can be
used as place card holders. The nursery pots can be covered with tissue
paper, burlap or other fabric and tied with a colorful ribbon or twine or
even repotted into inexpensive decorative or plan clay pots. Plants that
work great for this are: herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, lavender), mini
palms, mini schefflera, perennial plants such as Shasta daisies, sunflowers seedlings, young
ornamental grasses or bamboo as well as starter plants such as tomatoes.

Handing out seedlings as wedding favors has been popular for quite sometime.

However, there are some considerations to keep in mind.

• Seedlings are seasonal and only available November through May. During the summer months, one would need to select small potted evergreens or potted herbs. 
• Plants need to be ordered 6 to 8 weeks in advance from the nursery or greenhouse so that delivery can be timed for the week before the wedding. 
• Designate a person, or persons, to be responsible for separating the seedlings and bagging each one with a handful of moist peat. This needs to be done within a couple of days before the ceremony so that they are still fresh and then kept in a cool, dark area such as garage, basement or pantry.
• Where will the plants be held (at the ceremony or reception) before being handed out? It should again be a cool, dark area out of the way. Heat and sun will dry them out possibly causing the plants to wilt severely or kill them. Depending on how many guests are expected, these boxes can take up valuable space.
• The most commonly used plant varieties for handing out as favors are: pines, spruces, dogwoods, lilacs, red maples, even late spring/summer flowering bulbs.
• Be sure to keep in mind your guests lifestyle. If most of your guests are city dwellers residing in apartments, they are not going to have anywhere to plant most shrubs or trees, so herbs or flowers would be quite thoughtful.