Miscanthus in the Modern Landscape Design
More and more frequenty private gardeners use the energy plant named Miscanthus giganteus (also known as elephant grass or giant Chinese rush) for landscape designing.
As a natural hedgerow, for large grass beds or as solitary grass, as the enclosure of garden biotopes and ponds, or also in a flowerpod on terraces, this sort of Miscanthus always looks very attractively (almost as attractively as my daughter in the picture on the right).
Elephant grass offers a number of advantages here as compared to "traditional" garden plants:
+ very high growth rate (3-4 meters after two to three years) resulting in an ideal visual protection that remains generally preserved after leaf fall.
+ cost effective when purchasing planting stock: for example, a stock of Miscanthus "Maxi", diameter 20-35 cm, will become at least 2 m high within the first year, proving a very good visual protection. Price €12.95. As a comparison, a Smaragd thuja of the same height would cost at least €80.00.
+ no laterals: this is very important, first of all it’s an advantage for gardening that, for instance, as compared to bamboos, Chinese rush does not stool laterals. A solitary shrub of plants can reach a diameter of up to one meter, but then the spread will stop. Traditional bamboos (most of the sorts) may, on the contrary, become a real plague, and not only in your own garden!
+ multiple application fields: as it has already been mentioned at the beginning, elephant grass is used as a more cost-effective and fast-growing hedgerow. However, being planted solitarily, it provides a note of Asia in the garden, without appearing unnaturally. "Coulisses" of biotopes, ponds and pools push the object into the foreground or provide it with an adequate frame.
