As summer fades into autumn, your garden may start to look a little lackluster. But there’s an easy way to bring some late-season beauty and motion with ornamental grasses. Their wispy textures and graceful shapes create visual interest well into winter.
In this guide, we’ll explore 13 of the best ornamental grasses to enhance your landscape’s appeal. You’ll discover low-maintenance plants with year-round beauty perfectly suited to a variety of climates and soil conditions.
Feather Reed Grass
With upright arching blades and distinctive plumes rising high above the foliage, feather reed grass adds sculptural elegance to garden beds and borders. As the feathery bronze flower heads catch the wind and dappled sunlight, they seem to dance fluidly. Their multi-season appeal even lasts into winter.
- Native Area: Europe
- USDA Zones: 5-9
- Height: Up to 6 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
Fountain Grass
If you want to add a soft, airy texture with a graceful vase shape, fountain grass is an excellent choice. As an added bonus, the mature plants produce fluffy, brush-like pink or silver seed heads that gently wave in the breeze from late summer well into fall. Their diminutive size makes them ideal accent plants to contrast against bold foliage like hostas.
- Native Area: Asia
- USDA Zones: 5-9
- Height: Up to 5 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
Switch Grass
For a touch of smoke-like color, try switch grass. Many varieties offer a light, misty blue tone to their arching blades that perfectly embodies the lazy days of late summer. Then in fall, the foliage transforms into breathtaking shades of gold, orange, and burgundy. Panicum Virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ is one of the most popular compact varieties, known for its reddish tones. The pink airy flower sprays make incredible dried arrangements too.
- Native Area: North America
- USDA Zones: 4-9
- Height: Up to 5 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full sun or part shade
Blue Oat Grass
With its neat mounds of steel-blue blades, blue oat grass earns its name for dazzling cool tones. While the color remains consistent through summer and fall, the upright foliage takes on warm peach and gold highlights when backlit by the late-day sun. Blue oat grass thrives equally well in containers and border plantings. It brings coveted texture without spreading.
- Native Area: Europe
- USDA Zones: 4-8
- Height: Up to 4 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full to part sun
Purple Millet Grass
Make a dramatic statement in your late summer garden with purple millet’s rich burgundy tones. The compact, hedge-like shape adds unique form and height as a thriller plant. Blending beautifully with bright colors from rudbeckias and sedums, bold purple millet grass visually cools hot schemes. Let the cattail-like blooms stand for winter interest.
- Native Area: Africa
- USDA Zones: Annual
- Height: 3 to 5 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full sun to part shade
Japanese Forest Grass
Japanese forest grass offers a delicate texture ideal for Asian-style gardens, rock gardens, or shaded beds. Slender blades emerge bright gold in spring, gradually taking on emerald hues and blushing red tones in fall. Weeping mounds create the feel of a woodland glade. Try combinations with ferns, hostas, and azaleas for a serene appeal.
- Native Area: Eastern Asia
- USDA Zones: 5-9
- Height: 12 to 18 inches
- Sun Exposure: Part to full shade
Maiden Grass
A landscape staple, maiden grass deserves its popularity for good reason. The towering vertical shapes inject drama as background plants while airy arching leaves offer delicate contrast. Their tiny green blooms transform into silvery plumes by fall, seeming to capture and glisten in the softly slanting light. Try the variegated form ‘Morning Light’ for extra flair.
- Native Area: Eastern Asia
- USDA Zones: 4-9
- Height: 5 to 8 feet
Sun Exposure: Full sun to part shade
Mexican Feather Grass
Mexican feather grass evokes images of mountain meadows with its delicate stipa-like blooms waving gracefully atop slender stems. By fall, lavender-pink plumes emerge, eventually bleaching to blonde. Mexican feather grass thrives in hot, dry locations that stymie many other ornamental grasses. Use its petite size and airy flowers to add lightness and motion.
- Native Area: Mexico
- USDA Zones: 7-10
- Height: 12 to 36 inches
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
Pink Muhly Grass
For sheer drama in the autumn garden, few plants can compete with pink muhly grass. Billowing clouds of vibrant pink blooms seem to levitate over the tidy mounded foliage, taking on an ethereal glow in raking light. As a native grass, pink muhly suits wildlife gardens and meadow plantings. Or containerize for a singular focal point on patios.
- Native Area: Eastern North America
- USDA Zones: 6-10
- Height: 2 to 3 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full sun to part shade
Cordgrass
Making a welcome return from its formerly weedy reputation, cord grass offers uniquely broad, strappy blades and wheat-like plumes. Adapting readily to wet soils, cord grass performs beautifully in rain gardens, pond edges, and drainage swales with no supplemental water needed. Flower arrangers also value Spartina for dried bouquets.
- Native Area: North America
- USDA Zones: 3-10
- Height: 5 to 7 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
Little Bluestem
Beloved for its outstanding blazing fall colors, little bluestem proves an invaluable native grass for gardens and meadow plantings across North America. Smokey blue stems and leaves transition from sage green to rich oranges, reds, and purples as temperatures cool. Combine with asters and goldenrods to echo prairie plant communities.
- Native Area: North America
- USDA Zones: 3-9
- Height: 2 to 4 feet
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
Hairgrass
Offering a delicate, airy alternative to many bolder grasses, hair grass, and its varieties feature fine-textured blades that seem to flutter and dance in the gentlest breeze. Silvery seed heads sparkle as they catch slanting autumn light. Some varieties take on peach and orange fall highlights as well. Thrive in ordinary soil.
- Native Area: Northern Europe
- USDA Zones: 4-9
- Height: 12 to 39 inches
- Sun Exposure: Sun to part shade
Blue Fescue Grass
Fescue offers one of the widest varieties of any ornamental grass. The popular blue fescue flaunts icy blue spiky foliage, holding color all season with no fading. It thrives equally well in sun or shade, expanding slowly to form neat mounds or cascades from container edges. For big impact from tiny flowers, plant wildflower meadows mixes containing fescues.
- Native Area: Europe
- USDA Zones: 4-8
- Height: 8 to 12 inches
- Sun Exposure: Sun to shade