Festuca glauca ( Festuca cinerea) Festuca ovina glauca - Common Blue Fescue is a low, fine bladed evergreen grass with a distinctive silvery blue foliage. Blue fescue is a small, mounded, cool season grass grown for its compact size and blue foliage. With its clump-forming habit, blue fescue forms uniform balls of foliage topped with feathery straw bloom stalks in the summer. The blue fescue plants die out in the middle, and you should divide the plants every two to three years to keep the grass clump growing. Early Spring is the time to cut back all your ornamental grasses. In regions experiencing drought, native and ornamental grasses are a smart and show-stopping part of the landscape. Pruning Grasses In The Winter. Spring Pruning: Blue Fescue Grass. Recently Duston and I traveled to Roger’s Backyard Nursery in Cranesville, Pa, only about a 37 mile drive for us and took a tour of Roger’s Backyard Nursery. The blue coloration can vary, so it is best to buy named cultvars for uniformity of color. It is a non-native, clumping grass. Pruning Maiden Grass During the growing season, maiden grass height reaches 4 to 9 feet tall, and the plant spreads 3 to 6 feet wide. Blue fescue is an ornamental grass variety used in flower gardens for landscape design in USDA growing zones 4 through 8 where the summers are mild and not overly wet. A truly versatile perennial grass, blue fescue has an eye-catching blue hue that lasts all year. Blue fescue is also very drought tolerant, making it a great choice for rock gardens. It can be used as an accent plant, in mass plantings, containers, and crevices. Top: Getting the brown blades out of blue oat grass Bottom: Mexican feather grass before, a month after, and three months after pruning These little charmers are some of the easiest plants to tuck into your garden, because they fit almost anywhere, have year-round good looks, and need little care. These plants are particularly attractive when grown in groups. If you live in an area with frigid winter temperatures, your ornamental grasses likely look similar to the Blue Fescue grass above. Examples include any of the many Miscanthus varieties, blue fescue (Festuca glauca), and Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima).. A few are evergreen in the southernmost parts of the United States. Prune evergreen grasses and deciduous grasses the same way. There is dead and brown grass on the underside of the plant. No. Blue Fescue: before. There are hundreds of varieties of ornamental grass. It grows only twelve inches tall but the foliage is a striking blue-green color. Here is a freshly pruned evergreen grass called Elijah Blue Fescue, planted with evergreen Lithodora: Here is the same scene six weeks later, with the grass having grown back and the Lithodora spreading nicely. A great fescue that I recently discovered is Festuca mairie (Atlas Fescue… They … Festuca glauca (blue fescue) and Helictotrichon sempervirens (blue oat grass) are great performers, and don’t need to be cut back very often, but should be glove-combed out periodically to keep them looking good. ‘Elijah Blue’ is a common cultivar. Although many choose cut back their grasses in the fall, ornamental grasses are a wonderful plant to leave up through at least the early winter months. Do not cut back the grass in the fall or winter. Ornamental grasses are fairly new to the landscape scene—they've increased in popularity in the past couple decades. A: Blue fescue is an interesting focal point for a garden. Roger Higgins holding Blue Fescue Ornamental Grass. Is there a proper time to trim back the plant, or do you trim the grass at all? So that leads us to winter pruning. 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