lundi 27 novembre 2017

Growing Liriope And Ornamental Grass

By Stephanie Brown


Gardeners and landscapers have a variety of methods for bordering garden areas, depending on their personal style. Stones, bricks, and wood all make attractive borders, and hold mulch or wood bark inside the designated zone quite well. There are those, however, who prefer to use plants to border plants, and they will get a lovely liriope and ornamental grass zone established.

Such bordering grasses require consistent monitoring and upkeep in order to prevent them from taking over the entire garden bed. Without a dutiful gardener present, some forms of this plant can take over a whole lawn. This might not be such a problem when it comes to the lawn, as it lessens the need for mowing, but it can be a serious problem if it takes over flower or vegetable beds.

L. Spicata is the variety that is most invasive, as it spreads through runners. The other variety, L. Muscari, grows in rounded clumps that only get so large and do not spread further. It is not uncommon for L. Spicata to be erroneously marked as L. Muscari, and this confusion can create an ecological situation.

It is the potential for it to take over large areas that makes it potentially harmful to local plant species. This is especially true when it comes to destroying indigenous grasses. When an indigenous species gets crowded out of an area, the entire landscape can be forever altered, impacting other living things.

As landscaping and gardening have become more and more popular, we see more and more foreign plant species being brought to our Nation. Occasionally some get here by accident, hitching a ride on human shoes or in the stomachs of birds. However, most foreign plants have immigrated to America by invitation.

One plant brought here on purpose was Kudzu. It was the first Chinese import of the American colonies, and it grows quite well in both Georgia and Alabama. The livestock it was originally intended to feed found it not to their taste, but once it was in the ground it could not be stopped.

This plant has been reported to grow more than a foot a day in summer, and the foliage lays above hundreds of pounds of roots for every few feet. This means eradicating it is costly, and not always successful. Many people will burn it back weekly just to prevent their house from being eaten.

Because it has literally hundreds of pounds of roots in every small patch, no human can really dig it up. Burning it is only a temporary solution, and one would wish to avoid doing that when the season is extremely dry. Bulldozing an area to around ten feet deep then discarding the dirt, or scorching it free of all life forms, is the only method of eradication which has shown promise.

We humans have failed our planet in many ways. The spread of invasive animals and plants is just one manner in which we have used the planet without asking for Her blessing. Now our native plants and grasses are diminishing due to the careless nature of human beings.




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