Karl Foerster Feather Reed-Grass Plants

Calamagrostis × acutiflora Karl Foerster Feather Reed-Grass - 2 Litre Pot-Grown Plants

A medium-tall grass with lovely upright chest-high feathery foliage that wafts elegantly in the breeze and won the Perennial Plant of the Year award in 2001. The head-high flowers have a touch of purple-bronze when they are new, which fades by winter to a straw-blonde, a great winter feature, especially effective with the sun streaming through them. They make useful screening plants too.

Browse all of our other grasses, our perennial plants, or our alpines & wildflowers.

Features

• Deciduous grass
• AKA Calamagrostis 'Stricta'
• Clump forming
• Long straw-blonde coloured flowers on head-high stems
• Suitable for ornamental "hedge"
• Grows upright in full sun
• To 1.5m x 1m
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

Growing 'Karl Foerster' Grass

With a little help, grasses will establish almost anywhere there is some soil. Their favourite soil is fertile and well-drained, and they like moist conditions near water. Full sun really helps it grow upright and sturdy. Like any grass, they benefit from being sheared down to low mounds to make way for new growth. Cut back this variety in early Spring.

In Your Garden Design

This grass is ideal for those inspired by Piet Oudolf and his prairie planting schemes, planting in hazy swathes with other grasses as he does, interspersed with perennials such as Alliums, Helenium Moerheim Beauty and Loysder Wieck, Sanguisorba ‘Blackthorn’, Succisa pratensis, Anemone x hybrida ‘Robustissima’ and Echinacea. This is also a great architectural feature individually and, combined, can create a wonderful semi see-through hedge. You can also use these as interesting punctuation marks in rockeries, providing essential vertical notes.

Did You Know?

You have seen this grass around town at some point for sure, it is that popular, especially since 2001 when it won a Perennial Plant of the Year Award.

Karl Foerster (1874-1970) selected an especially good Calamagrostis × acutiflora (a naturally occurring hybrid of C. arundinacea and C. epigejos) while working at the Hamburg Botanical Garden right before the Second World War. A completely true story (that may also have happened) goes that Herr Foerster spotted the original from aboard a train, and illegally used the emergency brake so that he could hop off and collect it, cheerfully paying the fine.