Glorious Grasses

 
Scottsdale Xeriscape Garden | Glorious Grasses

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Ornamental grasses add movement, texture, form and color to the landscape, and they are easy to maintain. Create dramatic backlighting by planting Deer Grass, Pink Muhly, Lindheimer's Muhly and similar clumping grasses in a location where the sun's low rays in early morning or late afternoon shine through the flowing grasses and seed heads.

Allow grasses to spill over a walkway to "soften" hard edges. Mix blue grama and sideoats grama with wildflowers for a natural effect. Blue grama's fringe-like seedheads resemble eyelashes. Birds cling to the more upright seedheads of sideoats, plucking them clean.
Cut grasses back close to the ground every 1 to 3 years to rejuvenate. Do this in late winter (January-February) just before new growth starts.
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