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November's star perennials

Calamagrostis acutiflora 'Stricta' looks good all winter
Calamagrostis acutiflora 'Stricta'
looks good all winter

Stipa gigantea always tall and elegant
Stipa gigantea always
tall and elegant

High tuft of Carex comans 'Bronze'
Carex comans 'Bronze' -
no it's not dead!
  1. Calamagrostis are a small genus of tall upright grasses that lend form and structure to a winter garden. Calamagrostis x acutiflora and two cultivars C. x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' and C. x acutiflora 'Stricta' both are stunning, strong grasses that continually look good all through the winter months and are widely available and to be honest there is not much between them, except C. x a. 'Stricta' has a much tighter flower head than C. x a. 'Karl Foerster'
  2. One of the best grasses for shape and sheer elegance is Stipa gigantea. This is, as the name suggests, a large grass and commonly know as the giant oat. It starts the year as a tufty rosette of long thin leaves that arch to the ground, in mid to late summer it throws up tall, spaced flower stems with golden spikelets. The flower stems are quite tough and will stand all winter. One of the best features of Stipa gigantea is that you can see through it so unlike other tall grasses you don't have to restrict it to the back of the border.
  3. This is an unusual grass that strangely looks almost identical in the winter as the summer. It is Carex comans 'Bronze' and it is a brown grass, sorry bronze! It forms a tight tuft of arching leaves that spiral clockwise and is good to grow in the sun or shade, it is neat and tidy and excellent to help create contrast in foliage
  4. One of the most delicate plants there are for your garden is Actaea simplex formerly known as Cimicifuga. This is a choice medium sized perennial from Japan where it grows in subalpine and alpine meadows. Spreading by a rhizome, it has delicate fern like foliage forming dense patches that give the appearance of a good hardy fern, but come late October/November it throws up numerous tall spikes of feathery white bottlebrush flowers on black stems. There are a few really good varieties of this species too A. simplex 'Elstead' has browny purple stems and a creamy flower, A. simplex 'White Pearl' has pure white flowers from green buds. The two best cultivars of this species are A. simplex 'Atropurpurea' that has purplish leaves and buds with white flowers and A. simplex 'Brunette' that has even darker purple leaves and beautiful pinkish white flowers, the best of the lot.
  5. Another good late flowerer is Impatiens tinctoria subsp. tinctoria from central eastern Africa, where it grows in damp mountain forests and gullies and is hardy to –10°C. This is a long-lived plant standing at 2m and ideal for brightening up shady places and particularly if you have some damp shade. It has large lanceolate leaves 10cm-20cm and good sized white flowers with a red/pink top. Impatiens tinctoria subsp. tinctoria clumps up from a large tuberous rootstock but is not invasive.
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