There were bad winds yesterday, so we checked the Pinetum for any damage to trees and health & safety risks to the public, especially trees like Carya sp. because their wood is brittle.
Then I helped James hook up a trailer to the Kubota and prepare tools for volunteers to help him dig up snowdrops from the Wild Garden (Galanthus 'Magnet').
Grass cutting masterclass
Cutting this late is unusual (usually done a bit eariler, although they looked good up until now).
- True grasses are in the POACEAE family.
- Things like Carex, Cyperus & Eriophorum are SEDGES from the CYPERACEAE family. They have edges, stems are solid and triangular with leaf blades on three sides of the stem.
- Luzula & Juncus etc are in the JUNCACEAE family - basal leaves are flat/ cylindrical.
- RESTIONACEAE - rush like plants like many from S. Africa like Elegia capensis
- TYPHACEAE = reeds e.g. Typha latifolia - fluffy inflorescence.
Pampas grass/ Cortederia are evergreen, they are shaped approximately every two years. Flower stalks taken out.
Deschampsias are pulled and raked through.
Stipa treated like an evergreen though classed as deciduous.
Carex & Luzula - only spent flowering stalks cut off, and any unsightly/ scorched leaves removed.
Grasses were taken down to a certain height, and possibly shorter. I shaped it to green leaves coming up - mounds of gradual height. Secateurs, shears or hedgecutters were used.
Grasses I cut down:
- Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Waldenbuch' (Cut down)
- Cortederia monstrosa (Cleaned up)
- Pennisetum 'Fairy Tails' (Cut down - do not produce new growth until later in the season).
- Miscanthus sp. (Cut down - has structural stems that persist over winter, so blades should be pruned away individually with secateurs to ensure new green shoots are not cut off)
We observed later in the year on a Miscanthus 'Little Kitten' at Hanbury Court, that cutting new green tips doesn't seem to affect the aesthetics of it, the tips don't appear 'blunted' or they produce enough growth that you don't notice.
- Some of the early flowering ornamental grasses (end of May - early June) - Briza media 'Russells' and B. media 'Golden Bee', Stipa gigantea, meadow grasses like sweet vernal grass - Anthoxanthum odoratum (one of the earliest, flowers from April).
- Observation from Robert - naturalised daffodils trial on grass slope near Trials field under the widow maker pine - Pinus coulteri. Dominant sweet vernal grass - which as its the earliest seeding grass, seeds and then is cut, so there is not really any competition from others and its seeds get a better head start to establish - that suggests that the grass is continually cut thereafter?
Grasses can be propagated by seed or division. Seeds should be sown as soon as ripe.
Grasses unlike herbaceous perennials are split in early spring when they are actively growing rather than when they're dormant in winter.
Personal reference books of choice:
- Designing with grasses by Neil Lucas
- Gardening with grasses by Michael King and Piet Oudolf
See handout for more info.