Stuck in the Middle with You
Grasses bring movement, texture, and winter interest to the landscape, but they don't have to stand alone! Pairing clumping warm-season grasses with the right perennials can add seasonal color and variety while maintaining a natural, cohesive look.
Stuck in the Middle with You
Plants that grow well in between bunching grasses
We are deep into the warm-season grass period. The flowers are turning from their pinks and oranges of fall to their tawny golden color of winter. Nothing makes you yearn from a seat on the patio or a bench at a nature preserve to sit for a spell quite like watching the grasses dance in the breeze.
While the original grass garden in our trial gardens was beloved by staff and visitors alike, there was a call to enhance the simplicity of the block planting style with perennials. With a lot of trial and error, testing plant density, spacing, and what kind of general perennial growth patterns do best planted between clumping warm-season grasses, we assembled a working list.
Weaving perennials between blocks of warm-season grasses is a balancing act. The garden needs to look seamless, as if the block planting is uninterrupted, while also giving enough space to the perennials for adequate airflow and light infiltration. Some perennials and grasses combine better than others in different climates. If plants are too close together, one plant type can smother the other, leading to plant failure. Too far apart, and the plants don't intermingle and more weeds pop up in the open space. For the most seamless appearance, perennials that emerge from bulbs or corms tend to work the best. But one doesn't have to be limited to just bulbs!
The Success Checklist!
We've made a list for what we’re looking for in the kind of plants that work well in this design style.
For your grasses:
- manageable height to allow the selected perennial to be visible (usually under 48” in flower)
- clumping growth pattern
- airy seedheads
- limited to manageable levels of self-seeding
For your perennials:
- clumping perennial varieties
- flower stalks are held above the foliage, typically by more than 12”
- reliably upright habits
- leaves can handle lower air circulation and not prone to powdery mildew
Our Top Clumping Warm-Season Grasses:
- Muhlenbergia
- Andropogon cultivars
- Panicum cultivars
- Schizachyrium cultivars
- Sporobolus heterolepsis
Perennials that “slot in”
In dry, full sun locations, we like:
- Liatris species
- Allium cernuum
- Gaura varieties (keep an eye on growth habit to mix compatible sizes of perennial to warm season grass)
In moist to average soils in full sun to part shade, we like:
- Lobelia species
- Aquilegia
In medium to dry soil in full sun, we like:
- Asclepias tuberosa
- Monarda punctata
- Achillea (clumping varieties)
- Baptisia
- Tall sedum cultivars
In average soil in full sun, we like:
- Echinacea cultivars
- Penstemon
- Salvia
- Stachys ‘Hummelo’
- Stokesia
In medium to moist soils in part shade to shade, we like:
- Geranium maculatum
- Heuchera
- Hellebore
- Tiarella (clumping varieties)
- Sisyrinchium
- Anemone (clumping varieties)
Note: warm season grasses don't usually perform well in shady locations. For those areas, we recommend:
- Deschampsia
- Calamagrostis brachytricha
- Carex (clumping species)
Not So Stuck This Winter
Going into the winter rest period is a great time to review plant material. This is the time to see where designs can be enhanced with careful selections of perennials that thrive between swaying grass beauties. We're a sucker for the peaceful, quiet beauty of warm-season grasses and feel like more people would get on board with grasses if there were a few seasonal perennial jewels tucked here and there. Click Here for the Email
