Ben Vogt recently shared some images of the landscaping at the International Quilt Museum on instagram. It’s mostly native flowering plants in distinct blocks interspersed with lawn, to evoke a quilt pattern. The conversation in the comments got me thinking of a recent experience of my own. I had offered up some native plants left over from a recent project to a gardening group. Within hours the flowers were claimed. The grasses and sedges? Not so much.
The idea of using more native plants in our gardens seems to finally be taking off in the mainstream. This is great news! But there’s more to the story than adding a milkweed plant or two if we want to maximize the ecological benefits of natives. And the more I dig in, the more I suspect that something is decidedly missing from native gardening enthusiasm: grassy plants.
This is entirely understandable. Grasses don’t have big, showy flowers. And after all, most of us got into gardening in the first place because we love the flowers! Even setting beauty aside, we know that pollinators need pollen and nectar, so we seek out plants with flowers that can feed them. And most of us don’t have acres and acres on which to garden. Who has room for grasses when we’re trying to pack all those flowers in?
Grasses may not provide a nectar meal or showy flowers, but they are nonetheless vital to creating spaces that function ecologically and benefit wildlife.
For starters, grasses do support insects. Nine different species of skipper butterflies use Little Bluestem as a larval host plant, for instance, and many other insects feed on the leaves as well. Grasses provide cover for insects, birds, and small mammals. The leaves of grassy plants also provide excellent nest material for birds.
Grasses have another role that’s perhaps even more important: covering the soil. Healthy soil needs to stay moist, or the organisms in it die. It needs to be protected from drying and erosion. In a traditional residential landscape this means trucking in mulch and laying it down around plants. But grasses and sedges do this naturally. As winter snows break down their dried leaves, the leaves create a mat of organic material over the ground, keeping it moist.
But it’s not just grasses themselves that are important: mixing them into the flowering plants is part of the magic. Grasses and sedges have more plant material closer to the ground than forbs usually do (hence their superior ability to mulch). They can also provide support to flowering plants to keep them standing upright. The mix of grasses and flowering plants also creates great cover for small animals. Flowers and grasses are also naturally compatible below ground, as the grasses often have fibrous root systems, while many flowering plants (prairie plants especially) have a tap root or fleshy root system. Planting different types of roots together better utilizes the root zone and maximizes the plants that can grow in one place.
Another missing piece of the puzzle with native plants (which I think is related), is density. We need to plant more densely than we’re accustomed to in a traditional landscape. All the benefits of natives—food and shelter for wildlife, capturing stormwater runoff, filtering water, sequestering carbon—the benefits are diluted when the plants are spaced apart. Both planting densely and increasing our use of grasses will require a mindset shift on the part of gardeners in terms of what we think of as “pretty,” or what we recognize as a well-cared-for yard (a topic that deserves its own post or two or ten!). But I have no doubt that it’s possible.
When I look around my town, I see a lot of milkweed in people’s front yards, even fairly formal yards. 10 or 15 years ago, most of those people wouldn’t have dreamed of putting a literal weed in their front yard! But because we’re aware of how important milkweeds are for monarchs, we’ve adjusted our idea of what is garden-worthy. And the longer milkweeds are in the garden-worthy club, the more we perceive them as acceptable and even beautiful.
The same thing can happen with grasses and sedges. Really, it’s not too big a leap: ornamental grasses hit the big time with the advent of naturalistic gardening, and they’re definitely here to stay. It’s more a shift in how we garden with them that needs to happen. We need more than just a couple clumps for contrast!
So what’s holding people back from using more native grasses and sedges? I think it boils down to two big issues. One is a lack of flowers: grasses seem boring. There's also the perception that grasses look weedy and messy, especially if they’re mixed in with the flowers.
Let’s take the first problem: no flowers. True, they don’t have showy flowers. But grasses and sedges do have flowers! These subtle flowers can create beautiful textures throughout the garden. Grasses can also provide fall color; Little Bluestem turns the loveliest copper color in fall, and the delicate wisps of its white seed heads are truly stunning. Choose a limited palette of grasses that work well in a residential landscape and provide aesthetic value. Prairie Dropseed, Side Oats Grama, and Long-Beaked Sedge are just a few great options for a home landscape.
What about looking weedy and overgrown? The best gardening tactic to overcome this worry is to impose some limits. Don’t plant 100 different flowers; choose a limited palette where only a few are blooming at a time. Put a limit on the size: keep the plants short (2-3 feet tall) so they don’t overwhelm the space. Limit the planting space by putting an “orderly frame” around it: a path, a border of lawn, or a more traditional bed.
Admittedly, overcoming the idea that grasses equals weedy requires more than a few quick tips and plant suggestions. It will require a mindset shift, and that will take time. In the traditional gardening paradigm, we organize the flowers into the flower beds, and the grasses, neatly mowed, into the lawn. So of course grasses and flowers mixed together reads more like a meadow than a garden to many people.
One of my favorite children’s books is The Big Orange Splot, by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. It’s the story of neighbors living on a “very neat street,” and they like it that way. Then one day, Mr. Plumbean paints his house in vivid colors, with palm trees and alligators. Initially his neighbors are horrified, until they realize that, maybe, they don’t want to live in their “very neat” beige houses anymore either. So all the neighbors paint their houses in colors they love, and their street becomes a place they like to be.
Our gardens need grasses and sedges. We need to be the Mr. Plumbeans of the native gardening movement and add more of them to our yards. And when our neighbors raise an eyebrow, we can help them appreciate not just the ecological benefits, but the beauty as well. Before we know it, our neighbors will be clamoring for grasses and sedges for their gardens too.
Comments