On my travels around Canberra recently, I took a liking to the landscape surrounding the Questacon science and technology centre. It was a modern take on a native garden, with a focus on different native grasses planted en mass, feature gums, and silvery ground covers.

 

Some may argue that these grasses look shaggy or half-dead but I actually think they look quite beautiful at varying times of the year even after setting seed and drying out.

 

The colour palette was reflected in the choice of slate pavers for pathways  - which comprised of rust, brown and grey pieces. I quite liked the rusted cage-like structure at the entrance of this main path - like pointed incisors ready to lock upon unsuspecting prey.

 

 

All this dry, harsh landscape was surrounded by soft rolling green lawns, and when I say rolling I mean it. Unlike the temptation of easy-to-mow, run-of-the-mill flat turf, lovely crescents were formed with the sub soil before the turf was laid - creating arcs that produce movement throughout the space. Making it much more appealing to prop oneself up on when laying back into the grass. 

 

 

 

Lomandra longifolia was the super native ornamental grass of the noughties. It was sold in the thousands to every landscaper or council throughout Australia because of its vast range of application; it could tolerate roadside neglect, sun, shade, coastal sites, the list goes on... So it doesn’t surprise me that breeders keep churning out variations of this hardy plant, like this one I rather like called ‘Tanika’. It’s a fine leaf form of emerald green, a third of the parent leaf size, which gives it a softer, more graceful appearance in the landscape. It reaches 50cms high and 65cms across and looks fantastic planted in great swathes of sweeping texture, or mixed in with other hardy plants dotted throughout the landscape.

 

Another feature is the seed heads that appear in spring, these are interesting quite scary looking seeds and spikes all mixed into one but don’t fear they’re actually soft to the touch. After around eight weeks of watering to settle it in, this plant will survive on rainfall alone in most areas (obviously areas of low rainfall should be compensated occasionally). Because of this hardiness, this plant is great for dry gardens, native and coastal gardens. And as with most plants with a fibrous roots system, it's great for erosion control on sloping blocks.

 

 

 

 

 

Grasses are undoubtedly the most commonly purchased group of plants, being the backbone of many a garden design. Although extremely high maintenance, turf is the easy alternative to paving an area – it’s somewhere soft for the kids to play or can be used as an eye-catching river of green to meander its way through garden beds, creating an inviting pathway.

 

For me however, I find the real showstoppers in the broad grouping of grasses to be the ornamental ones, tussock forming or clumping grasses that were never intended to be walked on but rather appreciated for their bold forms, colours and rich textures in the garden beds themselves.

 

They create bold upright lines in contemporary minimalist gardens, they scream movement and colour in the classic herbaceous border setting, and soften the edges of water features just to name a few uses.

 

Relatively low in maintenance, most simply need you to remove dead growth annually and to divide them if the clump is getting too large. Grasses are also great value (most can form new plants via division) and there are grasses for boggy areas through to neglected sun-drenched situations, all with special characteristics of their own.

 

Some eye-catching grasses to look out for are Japanese Blood grass Imperata cylindrical, Leather leaf Sedge Carex buchananii, Dwarf Blue Kangaroo Grass Themeda australis cv Mingo, and some new forms of Swamp foxtail Pennisetum alopecuroides  -  ‘ Black Lea’ with black seed heads; ‘Purple Lea’ - drought tolerant with a true purple seed head; and the cultivar Nafray  - a semi dwarf with cream/purple seed heads.

 

These grasses should be available at any good nursery. (L-R) Bull-Rush Juncus sp., Great Pond Sedge Carex riparia, Black Mondo Grass Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘ Nigrescens’, Zebra Grass Miscanthus sinensis ‘ Zebrinus’, Knobby Club-Rush Isolepis nodosa, Narrow Leaf Maiden Grass Miscanthus sinensis ‘ Sarabande’, Frosted Curls Carex Carex albula, Blue Fescue Festuca glauca, Variegated Maiden Grass Miscanthus sinensis ‘Variegatus’, and Moor Grass/Blue Mountain Grass Sesleria caerulea.