Winter Grasses

I am pleased to report that the savannah garden is coming along nicely, beginning to provide the winter interest one desires from ornamental grasses. The late afternoon sun shining through the waving plumes of nasella tenuissima was a most cheering sight after a week of classes and an onslaught of student essays and exams.

 If my aging eyes did not deceive me, the dark color at the base of the plants is in fact the green of new growth. (Cue smile emoticon.) Let us hope that the six to nine inches of snow predicted for Sunday-into-Monday does not kill the plants, probably at the limit of their cold-hardiness here in the Mid-Ohio Velley.

But even if we should be so unfortunate as to lose the feather grass, our actual West Virginia natives are in their full late-season loveliness. Panicum backlit by evening sun gratifies the senses, and the plants are indestructible.

And of course, little bluestem in sunlight (here with the last of the muhlenbergia) was the inspiration for grass gardening in the first place. "Poverty grass," as it used to be called, is likely to go on forever and is at its most beautiful when everything else has pretty much given up.

No wonder I love this plant.