It's a flop

Today I want to talk about a failure. A plant that I've been really happy with for the last couple of years, but only now has revealed its true, ugly nature.

The plant I'm talking about is a grass that I unfortunately don't have a great photo of: Miscanthus sinensis 'Silberpfeil'. It's the light-colored variegated grass in this month-old photo.

***

I received a small division of this grass in 2011 in a plant trade with Gerhard at Bamboo, Succulents, and More -- here's one of his posts about this grass.

Up until yesterday this has been a showcase plant in my garden, growing much larger than I thought it would, and looking fantastic next to the related 'Gracillimus'. Gerhard talked about this plant being floppy though, which I have not seen evidence of.

Until yesterday morning when I saw this:

We had gotten a good, heavy rain during the night (an inch or more), and that was more than this grass could handle:

Now, I've got four choices for what to do next: 1) nothing, and hope the grass will pull itself back upright  2) give it a good trimming so it will look better in a few weeks, 3) support the grass somehow to keep it upright, or 4) remove the whole thing because it's going to be a problem every year.

I think I'll go with option #2 for now, with an eye on #4. Supporting (#3) could work if done correctly, but that really works best when you have some support in place that the grass can grow up through -- typing up a grass makes it look bunched and unnatural to me.

I hate it when beautiful plants take years to reveal their weaknesses!


Do you have any frustrating plants like this in your garden this year?

.