Sustainable Gardening Blog

This time of year many of us are admiring our ornamental grasses, now at their best, but some of us are also hearing warnings about their invasiveness.  Just that - "Don’t you know they’re invasive?"  Well, I hate it when that happens.  In fact, my number one gardening rant is about too little information, or even misinformation, about plants, usually with the words "native" or "invasive" being used rather loosely.

Still, being the nature-lover and dutiful student that I am, I hit the old keyboard and read all the websites I could find about badly behaved plants in Maryland.  Sure enough my favorite, Miscanthus sinensis, is listed as a "plant of concern."  Which might steer me toward buying a different one but what about the ones already in my garden? 

I’m happy to report finally finding the answers I was looking for - on HGTV’s website, of all places.  An article there on this very subject quotes from the Timber Press Pocket Guide to Ornamental Grasses to explain that invasiveness is a matter of genes, region, and culture, and then goes on to list exactly which grasses are problems and which aren’t.  Bless you, Timber Press.  Turns out Miscanthus sinensis, the bad boy of ornamental grasses, isn’t a problem in cold or dry areas, and there are some cultivars that aren’t problems anywhere because they’re sterile, don’t self-seed, or simply bloom too late in the season.  And even if I had an early bloomer, I could prevent its spread by simply removing the seedheads.

The specific cultivars recommended for the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic are ‘Morning Light’ (YES!), ‘Zebrinus,’ ‘Gracillimus,’ ‘Purpurascens,’ ‘Hinjo,’ and ‘Little Zebra.’  And it’s recommended that we limit the number of cultivars in our gardens to one or two, because cross-pollination can result in reversion to species - the worst offender of all.  See, we gardeners want to do the right thing and with enough information, we can (and without ripping out our gardens.)