Add romance and hazy color to your life–and create instant curb appeal–by planting perennials grasses in a front yard, alongside a path, or as a mini meadow.
Grasses are a cornerstone of a naturalistic style of landscape design that owes its current popularity to Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, whose planting schemes recently transformed an eyesore elevated railroad track into New York City’s magnificent High Line park.
Photograph courtesy of Adam Woodruff & Associates.
On a busy corner lot in Springfield, Illinois, garden designer Adam Woodruff replaced his own front lawn with a modern interpretation of a cottage garden.
Crowd Control
The mix of low-maintenance perennials, ornamental grasses, and shrubs creates a colorful mini meadow and persuades pedestrians to stay on the sidewalk instead of taking a shortcut across his yard.
Photographs courtesy of Adam Woodruff & Associates.
Close-up views of Woodruff’s planting schemes reveal how he created a painterly effect. At (R), plants include Amsonia hubrichtii, Perovskia atriplicifolia, and Salvia “May Night’.
Front Lawn Fix
Healdsburg, CA-based landscape architects Lucas and Lucas substituted drought-tolerant perennial grasses for turf in Sonoma, creating a low-water front lawn that glows golden at sunset.
Photograph courtesy of Lucas and Lucas.
Pathway Border
Photograph by Piet Oudolf courtesy of Planting: A New Perspective.
In Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf’s own garden, he planted low-growing late-season grasses to avoid obscuring the view.
Pots & Planters
Our DIY planters editor Julie Chai created deep purple drama with millet in a pot.
Photograph by Meredith Swinehart.
Photograph by Rob Co.
Garden designer Jennifer Segale of Wildflower Farms plants Stipa and other grasses in containers to give movement, “which I find is incredibly important in container gardens,” she says.
In northern California’s Napa Valley, landscape architect Scott Lewis replaced turf grass with Bouteloua gracilis “˜Blonde Ambition’, a sturdy grass that will stand upright through autumn and into winter “until you get a really, really hard frost or a really big rain,” says Lewis.
Photograph by Matthew Millman courtesy of Scott Lewis.
No-Mow Lawn
For more, see Vineyard Haven: A Napa Valley Garden That Belongs to the Land.
Foundation Garments
For more of this garden, see At Home with Rhode Island Artist Georgia Marsh.
Photograph by Christine Chitnis for Gardenista.
For more of this garden, see At Home with Rhode Island Artist Georgia Marsh.
Photograph by Christine Chitnis for Gardenista.
Punctuation Marks
Fence Substitute
For more of this garden, see An Architect at Home: A Kitchen Garden on Cape Cod.
Photograph by Matthew Williams for Gardenista.
Garden Sculpture
South Africa-based landscape designer Franchesca Watson uses tall grasses to create focal points to draw the eye in a suburb of Constantia. For more of this garden, see Garden Designer Visit: A Study in Green by Franchesca Watson.