Brighten up your greenhouse with tubs of colourful Fountain Grasses in red, crimson or purple marked foliage. Good splashes of colour these are especially useful amongst taller plants camouflaging bare stems or disguising tubs. Fountain Grasses are remarkably easy to care for with minimal attention yet respond with luxuriant displays throughout the growing season.
The original Fountain Grass is Pennisetum setaceum an invasive perfidious weed of scrubland throughout much of Africa and Asia. Thus in any warmer zones I’d not recommend growing this unless regularly dead-headed.
However in the balmy climate of the UK this offers little risk of spreading as not that hardy. Plus of course growing under glass this is so much more manageable and those fluffy seed heads so endearing- until you get little red green tufts appearing around other plants… Trimming the flowering stems before these have set prevents self-seeding, and promotes more leaf growth, however when warm and bright enough those fluffy stems can become another mass display in themselves.
As with so many plants the species can be sown, as a half hardy annual, but for the finest selections you need buy small plants and grow them on. (Their own seed will not come true though may give similar.) Your first plants soon put on size and being grasses can be split and multiplied, also being grasses these love rich conditions so romp away when well fed and watered. Indeed lavish them with larger containers and frequent liquid feeds you’ll grow huge clumps, which fortunately are not razor edged like Pampas grasses.
Alternatively these cope with poor conditions, almost complete neglect, as long as warm, and bright, inevitably dying down in autumn. Depending on variety and as these are so variably hardy, your plants may die away or if warm enough go dormant through winter (keep slightly damp do not dry out totally) to re-emerge in spring. Other than their need for some warmth these are beset by no obvious pest or disease problem, indeed even the pesky molluscs appear to avoid Fountain Grasses, now there’s a real plus.
As well as Fireworks, illustrated, there are another four dozen or so species and varieties you could collect.
