Pampas Grass

I honestly can't warm up to this plant; I appreciate its warm and golden chenille panaches at the beginning of fall but loathe its unbelievably depressing wet hay appearance in spring. It looks pretty for exactly three days, right before the velvety seed heads open, and then it turns into fluff in the wind and oddly sticks out of the snow, purportedly to provide winter interest in the garden for the next six months.

I had quite a few of these in the garden, but the more compact ones, which tend to be short lived, died down over the years and left only a couple of tall clumps to welcome the fall.

I really don't get grasses, I'm more of a berry and flower person myself. They're ok, I guess, if you ignore the fact that, much like Perry the Platypus from the cartoons, they don't do much. Their bulky clumps occupy a lot of space, at the front of the border no less in my specific instance, a location better suited for something well behaved, with pretty fragrant blossoms.

Instead I got plantzilla here, seven foot tall, choking anything at its feet and making a horrid mess for me to clean up in spring. Fortunately the neighboring garden phlox can stand its ground, as it has for at least a couple of decades. The latter has both flowers and fragrance, and is, of course, purple.

But I don't want to be negative about the fluff in the wind, there is a season for everything under the sun, and now it's its time to make hay, quite literally.