Monday, November 27, 2017

Growing Liriope And Ornamental Grass

By Stephanie Brown


Gardeners and landscapers have a variety of methods for bordering garden areas, depending on their personal style. Stones, bricks, and wood all make attractive borders, and hold mulch or wood bark inside the designated zone quite well. There are those, however, who prefer to use plants to border plants, and they will get a lovely liriope and ornamental grass zone established.

Such bordering grasses require consistent monitoring and upkeep in order to prevent them from taking over the entire garden bed. Without a dutiful gardener present, some forms of this plant can take over a whole lawn. This might not be such a problem when it comes to the lawn, as it lessens the need for mowing, but it can be a serious problem if it takes over flower or vegetable beds.

L. Spicata is the variety that is most invasive, as it spreads through runners. The other variety, L. Muscari, grows in rounded clumps that only get so large and do not spread further. It is not uncommon for L. Spicata to be erroneously marked as L. Muscari, and this confusion can create an ecological situation.

In the case of grasses grown for ornamentation, most of these varieties are not edible for deer, buffalo, or even cows. When entire fields of indigenous, and edible, grasses get wiped out, an environmental disaster can ensue. Species of larger animals, like the deer, can potentially go extinct due to the carelessness of many gardeners.

A foreign species can find its way to our shores as easily as hitching a ride in the grooves on the bottom of a pair of shoes. Many plants, and even some animals have been moved from one part of the Globe to another in this manner. Some are brought over intentionally for the purpose of landscaping.

Our first import from China was just such an aggressive plant. Kudzu grows quite well in the temperate climate of the Southeastern United States. While the livestock it was intended to feed would not eat it, the fields where it was first cultivated became the first death fields of healthy vines killing massive trees.

This plant has been reported to grow more than a foot a day in summer, and the foliage lays above hundreds of pounds of roots for every few feet. This means eradicating it is costly, and not always successful. Many people will burn it back weekly just to prevent their house from being eaten.

Because it has literally hundreds of pounds of roots in every small patch, no human can really dig it up. Burning it is only a temporary solution, and one would wish to avoid doing that when the season is extremely dry. Bulldozing an area to around ten feet deep then discarding the dirt, or scorching it free of all life forms, is the only method of eradication which has shown promise.

We humans have failed our planet in many ways. The spread of invasive animals and plants is just one manner in which we have used the planet without asking for Her blessing. Now our native plants and grasses are diminishing due to the careless nature of human beings.




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