There are some plants that you can always rely on at this point of the gardening year, like faithful friends or your favourite ragged jacket that your wife hates to see you in.  These plants are looking their very best, and getting more handsome with each summer day, while those around them are fading fast and looking wistfully towards the compost bin, waiting to join the others that didn’t make the grade.
The most reliable plant in my garden by late August is always Purple Fountain Grass, Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum.’  While the other inhabitants of my containers have had their struggles this summer the fountain grasses have gained strength as the weeks passed and the temperatures rose.  With several weeks of warmth now past they are looking spectacular, with their vivid purple foliage topped by pinkish feathery flower plumes.  I have two containers planted with them and I should plant up a few more to place around the garden for September.
Fountain grasses are the forgotten ornamental grasses of the spring.  Because they are so late to begin active growth you don’t see them in garden centres until spring is nearly over.  They are a warm season grass, and even in June and July they seem to be inert, not growing at all until the real warm days arrive.
There are some 80 species of Pennisetum worldwide.  The genus name comes from the Greek words penna (feather) and seta (bristle), a very appropriate description of their flowers, which look somewhat like a bottle brush.  They can range in height from one foot to over five feet, although the most common species that are hardy in North America don’t get anywhere near that tall.
The common name of Fountain Grass is an apt phrase for the effect of a blooming plant, with a fountain of flowers borne on stems coming out of a cascading mound of foliage.  Fountain grasses are just beginning to reach their peak in local gardens, and a mass planting of them looks stunning when a breeze begins to move the blooms around together, resembling a swirling ocean current.  The blooms make superb fillers in late summer cut flower bouquets.
Pennisetum alopecuroides gives us two popular cultivars.  ‘Hameln’ is a dwarf type that grows to about two feet tall, with cream-white blossoms beginning in early August and continuing until frost.  ‘Moudry’ is one of the most striking of all warm season ornamental grasses.  It has dark purple flowers held above the foliage, but it only produces these blooms if we are blessed with a long, warm Indian summer in late September and October.  Fortunately we usually are the recipients of just such weather and we can be hopeful that this will occur again this year.
  When the wind and snow of winter finally arrive Fountain Grasses will turn an attractive tan colour with the first frost.  Unfortunately the flowers will quickly fall apart after that and it’s time to cut the foliage down to ground level.  You’ll find yourself waiting anxiously next May for new growth to emerge, convinced that the plant didn’t survive the winter.  Eventually, like a teenage daughter choosing the perfect clothes to wear to school, it will finally emerge, and in a few weeks time you’ll wonder why you were so worried.