I whined and complained that I wanted rain so the ground would soften. After about five days of heavy rain we got a sun break and I headed out to plant the future meadowscape:
Despite the rain, the ground was still hard as a rock in places. Despite my sincerest desire to not hurt the dogwood, I ran into a lot of roots and might have just said, “Eff it, let’s hope it lives.” I really hope it lives.
Keeping with the tradition of doing everything wrong, I also planted everything too closely together. I followed Carolyn Kolb’s recommendations for planting grasses . . . sort of. She recommends cutting off the bottom 1/2″ from nursery starts (my bread knife worked perfectly), roughing up the roots a bit, then giving the grasses a smidge of granular fertilizer and some compost to get them going.
Everything looks so lame right now but I’m hopeful it will look great come spring. And next fall should be spectacular. I have a mix of switch grass (Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’), Pennisetum ‘White Lancer’ (Pennisetum macrourum), and little bluestem grasses (Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Blue Heaven’), plus a fountain grass for good measure (Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Redhead’). This is part of the master plan that Scott drew up. Hopefully I won’t screw it up too much. I need to smother more lawn so I can fit in the rest of the grasses and plants I have planned.
The inspiration for this planting scheme was a photo by Pam Penick, located here. Large swaths of different colored grasses will be intermixed with some bright drought-tolerant perennials. My goal is to water this once a week or less, once established.
I’m trying to tell myself that this will grow and look okay but I always doubt my spacing. But hey, this looked lame once, too.
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