Ornamental Grasses

Live Ornamental Grasses for Movement & Texture in the Garden

Ornamental grasses bring something most other garden plants can't: motion. While shrubs and perennials hold their shape, grasses sway, rustle, and catch the light differently depending on the wind and time of day — a kind of living texture that adds energy to a garden bed without requiring constant upkeep. Our ornamental grass collection includes five varieties, each offering a different scale, color, and seasonal personality.

Choosing a Variety

The Adagio Maiden Grass is a mid-sized variety known for fine, arching foliage and feathery plumes that appear in late summer, giving the garden a soft, movement-filled presence right through fall. The Dwarf Maiden Grass offers a more compact take on that same look, well suited to smaller garden beds or spots where a full-size maiden grass would simply take up too much room.

The Shenandoah Switch Grass brings a different color story to the mix, with foliage that takes on red and burgundy tones as the season progresses, making it a strong choice if you want a grass that contributes fall color rather than just texture. The Carex Feather Falls™ offers a cascading, fountain-like habit, often used in containers or along border edges where its draping form can spill over naturally. The Pink Muhly Grass rounds out the collection with one of the most visually striking late-season displays available in any ornamental grass — a cloud-like haze of pink-toned plumes that appears in fall and holds its color for weeks.

Growing Conditions

Growing zones across this collection are fairly consistent, ranging from zone 4 through 9 for the Shenandoah Switch Grass to zone 6 through 9 for the Pink Muhly Grass, with the Adagio Maiden Grass, Dwarf Maiden Grass, and Carex Feather Falls™ all rated for zones 5 through 9. This makes ornamental grasses a workable choice across most temperate U.S. climates. All five varieties tolerate full to part sun, giving meaningful placement flexibility — you don't need a perfectly sun-drenched bed to grow any of them successfully.

Using Grasses in the Landscape

Ornamental grasses work especially well as transitional plants — softening the edge between a lawn and a garden bed, filling gaps between shrubs and perennials, or providing a textural contrast next to broad-leafed plants. Taller varieties like the Adagio Maiden Grass and Shenandoah Switch Grass also work well as a seasonal privacy or screening element in spots where a full evergreen hedge would be overkill. Most varieties are also valued for their persistence into fall and even early winter, when their dried plumes and foliage continue to provide visual interest long after most flowering plants have finished for the season.

Low Maintenance, High Impact

Ornamental grasses are generally low-maintenance once established, typically needing just an annual cutback in late winter or early spring before new growth begins. For the relatively small amount of upkeep they require, they deliver an outsized amount of seasonal interest — movement in summer, color in fall, and structure that holds up well into winter.