Many other ornamental grasses share Stipa gigantea’s ability to make a summer border glisten, albeit not on the same impressive scale.
#Cloud gardens full#
Plants in full flower reach an average height and spread of 2m x 1.2m, taller again (up to 2.5m), in the case of the glorious variety known as Stipa ‘Gold Fontaene’, but are never obtrusive, making it a great choice for small gardens. Native to Spain, Stipa gigantea is drought-tolerant and will happily grow in both full sun and light shade as long as it’s given a free-draining soil, slowly forming dense semi-evergreen hummocks of foliage that give some structure to the winter garden. Instead the gauzy, delicate beauty of its shimmering flowers belies this ornamental grass’s impressively tough, resilient nature. Not only is it memorably beautiful, but it’s an impressively long-lasting display too, enduring well into late autumn and providing the perfect veil-like backdrop to late-flowering perennials such as ornamental sages, Japanese anemones, asters, helenium, eupatorium, echinacea, sedums and Verbena bonariensis.ĭifficult to grow? Not a bit of it. Situated in a bright, warm, open spot where they are backlit by sunlight, the effect is mesmerising, especially when those tall flower stems are softly shaken by gentle summer breezes so that each tiny inflorescence quivers. The classic summer shimmer plant, of course, is the decorative grass known as golden oats or Stipa gigantea, a majestic semi-evergreen species that forms a large tuft of slender arching leaves from which tall panicles of golden, oat-like flowers gracefully emerge in early summer.
Have you ever noticed how the best summer gardens seem to shimmer, a quality that’s almost impossible to define but is inextricably linked to the kinds of plants used? Like the gilt on a beautiful picture frame, they give a burnished, almost luminous air to the planting so that it softly glows.
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