When the new Downtown Cary Park opened in Fall 2023, visiting plant people were shocked at the poor plant choices, many of which simply won’t survive the summer in the Raleigh, NC area. Sadly, this is an all to common occurrence, when landscape architects, instead of knowledgeable horticulturists make the plant selections. In looking through the website of the Houston-based landscape architecture firm that designed the park, not a single one of the 100 staff featured on their website is designated as a horticulturist. This is why plant people have such disdain for landscape architecture firms that have no obvious plant knowledge.
Of the huge number of plants that died year one of the park’s existence, one plant that we focused on, is the native ornamental grass, Deschampsia caespitosa, aka tufted hairgrass. This was selected for the park, because the Landscape Architect’s staff found that it was native in North Carolina, and therefore must be adapted. Well, it’s native to a mountain bald in the cold, far western part of North Carolina, at very high elevation, where it never sees any temperatures that one could consider remotely warm. This is something that any competent horticulturist would have realized. It’s primary distribution is throughout Eurasia, into the Pacific Northwest Southwest, Canada, and just into the northern tier of US States.
On a visit to the park, one year after opening, we found only two of the 2,300 Deschampsias planted, still alive. We were allowed to take divisions of these two, since they obviously displayed good heat and humidity tolerance. We divided these and planted them out in test plots at JLBG, just over one year ago. This spring, we have been amazed at both their performance, as well as their amazing floral show. For us, flowering began in April, and is continuing through May, despite all Internet sites referring to tufted hairgrass as a late summer/fall bloomer. We’re very excited about the potential of these selections, so stay tuned as our trials continue.
Lemonade from lemons.
What a sad, sad story! Such a waste of plant life and money. Two surviving plants out of 2,300 is mind-boggling. “Right plant, right place” is obviously not something these folks have heard of. Hopefully some good will come out of this debacle and these two survivors will be the first of many generations of more heat-tolerant progeny.
Great article Tony
Grrrr, yes, the mistakes of the “hardscape” people are legion. In my town, azaleas were planted on a sunny, steep slope, in alkaline soil. You can imagine the horrible, slow dealths occuring right before our eyes over the next several years. I also wonder about the decision makers in the parks departments that allow the landscape architects to make such rotten choices.
You are so right. Unfortunately, it requires people with a high bandwidth to realize how little they actually know about a subject, and then seek the proper advice.