Korean feather reed grass

* Common name: Korean feather reed grass

* Botanical name: Calamagrostis brachytrica

* What it is: Korean feather reed grass is a slowly expanding, clump-forming ornamental grass with an upright habit and green blades that turn yellow-tan in fall.

This Asian native’s nicest feature is the feathery, pinkish plumes that shoot up a foot or so from the foliage from late summer into fall. The plumes eventually turn light tan.

Like most ornamental grasses, Korean feather reed grass seldom runs into bug or disease issues, and deer and other animals don’t like it.

* Size: Grows three to four feet tall. Clumps expand to two-and-a-half to three feet wide in a few years.

* Where to use: Korean feather reed grass grows in full sun or part shade. It prefers damp soil but can tolerate some drought and handles clay soil better than most plants.

Grasses like this are useful in lots of landscape situations… as sentry plants on either side of a sunny door, gate, or entryway; as an informal hedge; mixed in a perennial border; spotted around water gardens, or as a backdrop plant behind shorter perennials and annuals.

* Care: Keep soil consistently damp the first year to help establish the roots, then soak occasionally during hot, dry spells. Fertilizer is usually not needed.

Cut browned-out plants to a stub in March (or any time over winter). If clumps spread where you don’t want them, dig, divide, and plant fist-sized pieces elsewhere.

* Great partner: Sedums, asters, mums, and goldenrod are good perennial-flower partners that bloom as Korean feather reed grass’s foliage is yellow and tan. The upright habit contrasts nicely with any rounded or mounded shrub, such as shrub roses, boxwoods, dwarf abelia, dwarf chokeberry, or deutzia.