How to Trim and Prune Ornamental Grass

Okay once these types of grasses established, they make really beautiful Fall accent plants. You can see these gorgeous gold plumes here that will stay on the plant in the wintertime and once the grass goes dormant, all these green needle like leaves here will turn tan and be quite lovely. Come Spring you can actually trim back. Because we are dividing this plant now, we are going to do a little bit of disbudding and I would like to save some of these plumes. So I am going to trim them back with my bypass pruners that I have here and I am going to save them for a flower arrangement that I have been working on. they will hold up really well. Once I've gotten as many of these off as I would like, I am going to follow up with some sharp scissors. I am just going to put these here in this vase so I can enjoy them a little bit longer. Then I am going to take my handy pair of just good old kitchen scissors and I am going to come down to the base of this plant and I am just going to start trimming it back. Just going to cut all these reeds of grass back. We do this to help reduce shock to the plant. We want the plant to send its energy to the roots and not so much to the leaves and to the flower head that is on it right now. So I am going to take it all the way back in half and as I am going if I find anything that might be an old brown bloom from where it got dried out, I am just going to groom them out as well. I couldn't take my fingers and I rake the plant with my hand and I am going to continue cutting it back. It is a fairly large plant and it got a little too crowded planted next to this Sedum here so we are going to cut it in half, move and get it into another part of the garden. We've nearly got it all trimmed back. Grasses are amazingly resilient. They are just like a lawn. You cut it and it comes back.