When I drive through the suburbs of a city, I often think how much it looks like any other city. All the stores seem to be the same.
Landscapes used to be that way, too. No matter what part of the country you were in, all the yards looked like they had been cut with the same cookie cutter. Increasingly, though, garden designers talk about “a sense of place.” Draw your inspiration from the countryside right where you live, they say.
Claire Sawyers’ “The Authentic Garden: Five Principles for Cultivating a Sense of Place” (Timber Press, 2007, $34.95) had a profound influence on my thinking. It sounds so reasonable to imitate the native scenery around us rather than import plants to imitate fancy gardens we’ve seen in design books or on our travels. Such a landscape not only looks more natural, but is easier to maintain, too, since native plants are generally much easier to grow in the environment to which they’re accustomed.
Now that I have a brand new landscape to design this fall, my thoughts are increasingly turning to our native grasses. What could be more Midwestern than a landscape that imitates the prairie? With the front yard featuring native grasses, visitors would be reminded as soon as they pulled up that they were in the Midwest.
I’m still in the planning stages, but at this point I’m favoring some of the shorter grasses for our sunny curbside; I want to avoid tall grasses like Indian grass and big bluestem that could obscure our vision as we pull out of the driveway.
A better bet, I think, would be blue grama, which grows only about a foot tall. Or maybe I’ll decide on its close relative, side-oats grama, which is about twice as tall. Both are delicate-looking natives that are actually tough as nails and drought tolerant.
Then there’s prairie dropseed, a native grass that won my deep appreciation during a severe drought because it remained a fountain of emerald green when everything around it was dying. I love the soft, refined texture of this grass, which grows 2 to 3 feet tall.
And who could resist little bluestem’s crimson red in autumn? Against a snowy background, this 2- to 3-foot tall grass also provides welcome winter color.
Switchgrass, which grows 5 feet tall, is too tall for my curbside planting but perfect for screening our low deck. Of all the prairie grasses, it also has the best chance of surviving in the hard-packed clay left around the house by the excavation.
No place to plant a little prairie? Try creating your own “sense of place” by planting prairie grasses in containers. Switch grass in particular will look great all winter.
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