What to Plant With Purple Fountain Grass

Other Ornamental Grasses

• Create an unusual bed in the corner of the yard with purple fountain grass and other ornamental grasses. You won't have to worry about mowing these grasses. Place a tall grass such as feathered reed grass in the corner. It grows to 6 feet tall and has wheat-colored plumes. Put the purple fountain grass in front of the tall grass. Purple moor grass isn't purple but green with a neat mounding habit. It is shorter than purple fountain grass. Edge the bed with blue fescue, which has a bluish cast and grows only to 12 inches.

Purple Flowers

• Play up the purple of the grass by planting it among purple flowers. Choose tall flowers, such as purple coneflower, that hold their flower heads at the same level or above the grass. Veronica has 16- to 20-inch flower spikes covered with small purple flowers. Larkspur blooms in purple and grows to 4 feet high with feathery leaves. Border the bed with campanula. It grows to 12 inches high with bell-shaped flowers on 8-inch stalks held above the plants.

Color Contrast

• Purple and yellow pop against each other. Plant yellow sunflowers in back of the purple fountain grass. The lower leaves of sunflowers sometimes look a bit ratty and the grass will block them from view. Daylilies have long leaves that look like giant blades of grass. They bloom in various shades of yellow and orange. Cosmos usually grows to 4 feet high. However, there is a shorter variety growing to 2 feet high that blooms in yellows and oranges. Edge the bed with blue salvia, which looks more purple than blue to complement the grass.

Shape Contrast

• Contrast the long narrow leaves of the purple fountain grass with broad-shaped leaves of canna which grow to 4 feet high. The flower stalks are topped with bright yellow, red, orange or white flowers that look like giant gladiolus. Canna are frost tender so treat as an annual in cold winter areas. Black-eyed Susan's daisy flower contrasts with the narrow seed heads of the grass. Asiatic lilies have trumpet shaped flowers. Fill out the bed, and plan for a full season of bloom from spring through fall with annuals such as round African marigolds and flat zinnias.