Ornamental grasses are an entire class of plants that are widespread but surprisingly underused in Mississippi landscapes. Their shapes, lines, textures, and graceful movements add exciting contrast to the usual palette of similar-size shrubs and perennials.

Not talking about lawns or the grasses we grow for food including black millet, burgundy sugar cane, and lemon grass; however, they can be quite showy in mixed flower gardens. This summer I discovered the new Pink Zebra, a regular corn-on-the-cob corn with eye-popping colorful foliage of green streaked with white, pale yellow, pink, burgundy and purple. Tasty, too!

For groundcovers I use my share and more of several grass-like plants, from six kinds of Liriope or “monkey grass” of green, striped, or golden, and both plain dark green and black mondo grass. I enjoy eye-catching clumps here and there of golden Acoris (sweetflag), mostly in light shade where they really shine without suffering in really hot sun, plus very similar green, variegated, and golden sedges. And I think my dwarf Golden Sword yucca is grasslike as well.

My favs, however are true grasses, mostly clump-forming perennials. Not so much common old-school pampas, with its tall, bold flower plumes; it’s too big for my garden, and trying to keep it tidy in the winter either involves bloodletting from its razor-edged leaves or half killing it into blackened stumps with fire, which is recommended against, though some of you do it for the perverse pleasure.

And though compact pink muhly grass is recently popular for mass plantings and its flowers are stunning in the fall, most of the year the plant looks like a weak clump of weeds. Ditto with foot-tall blue fescue, which rots in our heavy rains, heat, and humidity.

Though I wouldn’t mind a clump forming bamboo, I would never plant “running” types, not even the beautiful black bamboo except in a pot; ditto for dwarf groundcover bamboo, another hard-to-control thug that gobbles up real estate. My little garden can’t accommodate any of those; however, I do find time to manage both native river oats, which does tend to spread a bit by seeds, and blue lyme grass with its glowing silver-blue leaves. And I manage to keep a colony of tall, white variegated giant reed contained by chopping errant rhizomes.

Mostly I stick with tidier, clump-forming grasses that are common in both home gardens and commercial landscapes despite not being readily available in garden centers. Love how they complement shrubs and perennials and well in in large mixed containers.

I have one clump of perennial Pennistum with its foxtail-like seedheads, and every spring I plant one or two clumps of a very showy summer annual called purple or burdundy fountain grass even though it, like culinary lemon grass, has never made it through the winter for me.

But my main ornamental grasses will always be the ones called maiden grass. Latin name is Miscanthus, and it is available in several cultivars of different sizes and variegations. They range from knee- to chest-high, solid green, streaked variegation, and the antique “zebra grass” with yellow bands across the leaf blades, which I rescued from my great-grandmother’s garden. Landscapers use Miscanthus because it is tidy, easy to manage, not invasive here, and has curled, feathery flowers instead of tall plumes.

I tidy my grasses in mid-winter with shears, going at them at an angle like licking around an ice cream cone; sometimes I “Felder them up” with spray paint for a few weeks ahead of pruning.

Main thing is, ornamental grasses complement any landscape or large container planting. And don’t need mowing.