Cortaderia selloana

I do not like Cortaderia selloana and I’m not sure why. It reminds me of my childhood, growing up in the seventies, when the range of plants available to the English gardener was a fraction of what is on offer now. Incongruous clumps of it would sit in the middle of otherwise perfectly reasonable lawns and I, being a curious child and quite possibly a slow-learner, would poke around in it, lacerating my hands with fine, deep cuts which stung for days.

A sizeable clump or drift of pampas grass, preferably at the back of a border, can be a handsome thing. The one pictured is in Oxford University Parks and stands at 3m/10′ tall. It’s foreground was a mixed bed of other South American natives, salvias, fuchsias and lobelias – all of which have been finished off by the frosts. Its magnificent culms, in size and shape, if not colour, remind me of another feature of my childhood – fairground candy floss. They come into their own at this time of year, not simply as the last plant standing, but the culms catch the light, particularly in late afternoon, and it is not unpleasing.

As an adult, I have been asked to remove established clumps from gardens and when a mechanical digger has not been available or was unsuitable, I’ve found setting them on fire quite effective, prior to manual excavation of what remains. They are tenacious. For the first time ever, I have been asked to plant Cortaderia rather than destroy it, and I have twenty small plants lined out in the nursery where they will stay until March when I will plant them in what will be an unusual meadow, seasoned with a variety of exotics for display in the final quarter of the year. We are developing a spring/early summer-flowering meadow down by the river which bounds the property – this will be native species.

A garden is many things, including a theatre for the exercise and nurturing of virtues such as patience – the work of gardens rarely brings an instant beauty to be enjoyed, turfing aside, but even that is a sleight-of-hand: the newly turfed lawn hides hundreds of hours. I have included Cortaderia in my English garden because it cultivates tolerance within me. I do not need to tolerate that which is agreeable to me, but that which I might find difficult and challenging. And faced with the challenge of using pampas grass creatively, I can see that I might feel differently about it as the work matures. It will, at least, be in a community of plants composed with a unity of purpose, and already, as I write, I am imagining how this space will be formed. I could create a ‘perfect world’ garden in which no weeds grew beyond their cotyledon leaves and only my favoured plants were present – it is possible, but this would not be a ‘real world’ garden. And, if physically realised gardens have anything in common, despite their infinite variations in form, they are realist compositions. Otherwise, they fail.