Designing with Ornamental Grasses for Fall Movement: 9 Tips and Tricks

Sometimes overlooked, ornamental grasses add sway, texture, structure, and color to the perennial border, mixed hedge, and container design. They brim with multi-season appeal and shine in the fall, whether as a specimen, screen, mass planting, or a backdrop for blooms.

With varied forms and plumes, the show persists into winter. Leave grasses standing as the season’s end rather than cutting them back, as their blades and dried seedheads are stunning in the frost.

In addition to their ornament, grasses are durable and adaptable. The right species or cultivar in the best growing conditions will thrive with little tending and few resources. They provide habitat for birds and wildlife through shelter and forage, are hosts for pollinators, and provide nesting sites for other beneficial insects.

When choosing ornamental grass design, avoid species that can become invasive in your growing area. Native grasses for our region and their cultivars are rugged selections that offer ecosystem benefits through low water needs, erosion control, and improved soil structure, all while highlighting the landscape design with movement and contrast.

Blue Grama Grass Seeds

• Heat- and drought-tolerant native grass
• Eyelash-like golden or red inflorescences
• Feathery foliage for texture in gardens
• Supports butterflies and birds
• Low-water, low-maintenance plant

View at Botanicalinterests.com

Nestle in a Foundation Planting

Ornamental grasses bring multiseason appeal and visual interest among foundation plantings. With their fine blades and varying forms, they offer variation among broad-leaved specimens and needled foliage. A layered landscape brings high impact and visual appeal for lasting interest.

Incorporating perennials into the front of the house shakes up a traditional shrub border and adds sway, texture, and color. Perennials ensure there’s always something interesting going on in the landscape.

Play off ornamental grass design with structural evergreens to anchor the arrangement all year. Blend them with deciduous flowering shrubs to soften the display. Dot them with low-growing perennials to unify the border.

Switchgrass is a top performer with enough heft to support a foundation arrangement. The blades of ‘Cheyenne Sky’ begin blue-green and transition to wine red in early summer, with plumes to match. ‘Northwind’ is one of the most vertical varieties, with fine olive-green blades. Leaves turn yellow and tawny in the fall for lasting appeal.

Choose a Waterwise Arrangement

Water is a primary consideration for many of us these days, and flowy grasses step in as drought-tolerant ornamentals in xeric designs and water-conscious landscapes. With extensive roots, many withstand moisture fluctuations and are a good fit for dry zones. Especially hardy across conditions are native prairie species accustomed to rocky, sandy, sunny, and drought-prone situations.

Incorporate the bladed features into the xeric landscape or rock garden for a low-maintenance specimen that doesn’t require supplemental irrigation.

Incorporate into a Mixed Hedge

A mixed hedge serves multiple roles in ornamental grass design. They may define a boundary, screen unsightly features, or sculpt a view. The planted buffers become more dynamic with a diverse design, including ornamental grasses.

As with a foundation arrangement, layering the look with varying heights and textures adds interest. Repeat selections to keep the aesthetic cohesive, bringing in plants from elsewhere in the garden, too. Use ornamental grasses to punctuate the lineup amongst evergreen anchors and flowering shrubs.

Build an Essential Perennial Border

Perennial borders aren’t just for the periphery or naturalized spaces. Bring them out front or anywhere you have room to create a balanced, energized space. Borders offer exuberant flowers and foliage in seemingly effortless style that changes with the seasons. In a well-planned border, there’s always something interesting happening, even in the quiet days of winter.

An aesthetically rich border includes a bed of flowers, as well as varying textures, forms, and colors. A diversity of plant material lends visual interest and ecological value. Ornamental grass design adds texture, swaying in the breeze and contrasting with evergreens, bare branches, and dormant perennials in winter.

Plant En Masse

Designing with ornamental grasses brings the most impact with a grouped planting. Planting en masse serves to fill a space with lush blades and waves of tufted plumes. The sea of blades moves in the breeze all summer and rustles in the winter. 

Use massing to fill sloped areas, naturalized borders, stylistic and contemporary compositions, and tough growing sites. In difficult growing areas like dry sites and full sun exposures, banking on a species that works solves a landscape challenge.

Grow an Annual Display

Not all grasses are winter hardy, and even those that are can be treated as annuals to highlight a display, especially in summer and fall. 

Fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides) makes a showy seasonal annual with arching blades from deep green to purple to variegated. Unfortunately, the adaptable species is invasive in many growing areas. Sterile cultivars offer a less aggressive stand in, though they’re still a member of the invasive species.

‘Hush Puppy’ has light pink flowerheads that don’t bear seeds. The fuzzy pink plumes become tawny brown with fall’s cold weather. Others include ‘Cayenne’ with dark red bottlebrushes and ‘Praline’ with sprays in pecan and taupe.

Frosted explosion grass (Panicum elegans) is another annual, this one with glittery, airy seedheads. ‘Frosted Explosion’ grows easily from seed and shimmers in the flowerbed, container, and fresh bouquet until frost. The multi-stems bear bunches of the petite white blooms that “explode” into the showy seeds. Plumes start a creamy, silvery green with bronze tinges as they mature. Bright green, narrow-bladed leaves form a fountain from a tight base.

‘Frosted Explosion’ tolerates poor soils, as long as they’re well-draining, and thrives with consistent moisture until established. In warm climates with optimal growing conditions, it may reseed. Harvest the seedheads for floral arrangements to prevent unwanted volunteers.

Create a Potted Feature

Ornamental grasses take a starring role in seasonal container designs. Use them to thrill the composition, either standing alone or surrounded by annual color.

Cool-season annuals to pair with grasses in a pot include pansies and violas, snapdragons, calendula, and marigolds. Perennials to show off in a fall planter are aster, black-eyed Susan, coreopsis, and chrysanthemum for a showstopping display.

Cluster the pot with seasonal pumpkins and other gourds to accompany the autumnal theme on the doorstep. Move the grass to the landscape after enjoying, or plan to overwinter them in containers where hardy.

Use as a Turf Alternative

Fall is prime for planting, and the mild conditions give newly added transplants time to develop roots before winter extremes. If you’re thinking of reducing lawn areas or installing a turf alternative, this is a good time to consider groundcovers or even ornamental grass design to fulfill the role.

Depending on your uses, there are a number of grass species to fit a variety of sun exposures and site conditions that require less maintenance than turfgrass. Carex is softly mounding, with graceful tufts to fill an open expanse or slope.

Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pennsylvanica) is native to central and eastern North America. It creates a green carpet with gently arching blades and doesn’t need mowing. For a short, grassy appearance, though, mow a few times a year to keep leaves two to three inches tall. It spreads through rhizomes and may self-seed in optimal conditions.

Blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) is an American species that performs well as a lawn alternative and groundcover. The fine blades take occasional mowing and reach only six inches tall (and up to one foot when in flower). The green blades turn tawny red in the fall, with curls to add texture to the display.

Blue grama performs best in western states in more arid climates with less precipitation. It is drought-tolerant once established and a fit for waterwise, low-maintenance ornamental grass design.

Brighten Shady Sites

We often associate grasses with sun-drenched exposures, but the right selections bring movement, color, and texture to shaded garden designs, too. In shady garden spots, vivid selections like Japanese forest grass bring a lush aesthetic.

Japanese forest grass, or Hakone, adds brilliant color. With a mounding, cascading habit, the narrow-bladed grass is feathery with a soft textural appeal.

‘All Gold’ is a bright, golden-green cultivar. In heavy shade, blades are chartreuse. With some sun, they show more gold. ‘All Gold’ is a slow grower with gently spreading rhizomes. Feature it as a specimen in the bed or container, or plant it in a mass along a shaded slope or at the front of the border.