Miscanthus is a big beautiful Asian grass sometimes known as silvergrass. I think the word “silver” captures some of the elegance of this plant, but you’ll see the true essence of its beauty on a windy day in October when the flowers are out.
Miscanthus x giganteus is a well established bio-fuel crop (check out wikipedia for A LOT of information on it!). In our landscape, it’s used as a privacy hedge in summer, and then I process the stalks into mulch each fall (the SunJoe chipper shredder is great for this!). It produces quite a bit of mulch for the amount of area it grows in. I like to mix the the light colored dry grass mulch with darker mulches like sticks, shredded leaves and woodchips to vary the look of the mulch.
It’s a great privacy hedge, the grass is beautiful as it grows and grows during the summer. The stalks reach onto a second floor deck where we have it planted!
Miscanthus is tough to dig up by hand, hence the slightly higher price than other root-piece-propagated plants we have to offer.
Growth Parameters:
This is a sterile cultivar (does not spread by seed) , it certainly expands by the roots though! It will creep a few inches towards the sun each year. Make sure you plant this in a location where you don’t mind it spreading a bit.
Height in full sun is around 12-14 feet. Full sun to part sun. Seems to do fine in wet clay and drier more sandy loam.
