Garden Making Editor-in-Chief Beckie Fox shows you a range of ornamental grasses in the beautiful setting of the Niagara Parks Botanical Garden.
We then take you behind the scenes to a major grower and plant wholesaler, Valleybrook Gardens in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., where Sales Consultant Tony Post explains how easy it is to grow ornamental grasses.
Grasses in video
The grasses shown in the video are:
- ‘Wind Dancer’ love grass (Eragrostis elliottii ‘Wind Dancer’)
- Giant reed (Arundo donax)
- Japanese blood grass (Imperata cylindrica)
- ‘Blood Brothers’ switch grass (Panicum virgatum ‘Blood Brothers’)
- Maiden grasses (Miscanthus spp. and cvs.)
- Zebra grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’)
- Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra)
Valleybrook’s plants are marketed under the Heritage Perennials brand and they have more information online at perennials.com as well as a retailer locator.
Readers turn to the pages of Garden Making to learn about plants to consider for their garden. This video was inspired by a story in issue #7, Fall 2011, on shade-tolerant ornamental grasses. You can order a back copy:
Our thanks to everyone who helped on our first video, especially videographer Mark Disero.
That was a really great video, you’ve sold me on growing ornamental grasses. I’ll have to give it a try next season!
Nice presentation. Talk about breaking new ground in magazine production. I love the hard copy and this video presentation is a great bonus. Thank you
What a great idea to include a video – look forward to seeing more and a video is so much more informative than just an article! Keep up the great work!
Adele
Thanks for including this video with the e-newsletter. A great new communication tool. With winter coming on, it will be nice to sit back and watch this video again and plan how to use more grasses in my garden. Looking forward to more!
We love ornamental grasses here. We get several feet of snow each winter with a min of 4 ft on the ground at any one time. It’s beautiful to see the miscanthus(sp) poking above the snow on a sunny day. It’s true, it takes no effort once established.
Thanks, Suzin. We’re glad the video inspired you to experiment with more grasses. We do plan to post more instructional videos, so stay tuned!
-Beckie Fox
Nicely done, with good information I can use. I’m just starting to dabble with grasses and didn’t know to trim them back in the spring. I’m going to try the Japanese forest grass next as I have lots of shade in my garden. I hope you plan on giving us more videos, info sinks in better for me than having to do a lot of reading!