THANK YOU Vikki, MrMorton and Leslie! This is exactly the information I needed. I do NOT want to be moving anymore heavy plants. Vikki, your grass bed is lovely. I bet it's going to be awesome by this fall! MrMorton, your question about mowing over is a GOOD one! The problem is that this new "cottage garden" had to be put in a field. Since money is a major problem now, I'm trying to create a backdrop for my garden without investing too much cash. I'm using a mixture of helianthus, boltonia and grasses, which I hope will blend into the countryside. I do know it will take many months for any of this to achieve any height, but that's ok. Anyway, the grasses etc. create the border between the garden and the field, so it would be quite easy for the man who mows the field to clip these little fellows, even though I've allowed several feet between the field and the grass. Leslie, I'm so happy you mentioned the sedum AJ!!! This was exactly my plan to put them between the grasses. Last year I divided all of my AJs and this year I have about three dozen plants ready to put around the grasses. I also have a few dozen each of daylilies, Rudbeckia 'Goldstrum' and Echinacea 'Magnus' to fill in this zone between the field and the main cottage garden area. I also have a long mound helping to divide the areas, which will be covered with my collection of hens and chicks and lots of different sedums and other rock garden type plants. It's a work in progress and I'm having a lot of fun overcoming all these obstacles. :-) Thanks again to you all for taking the time to help! PattiOh

You do seem to have a large property although it's not shown in the photos. I thought perhaps you could take some examples from English landscaping. More than a hundred or so years ago, the English hillside was bare and they decided to create vistas by adding trees by the hundreds. In your case, I thought perhaps you can take this idea and add lilacs in the far horizon to create a view from afar. When you've done that, you could connect your garden to the far end by making trails. You can create areas of sweeping flowers (think meadow look) Closer to your patio, you can do an extension by creating terraced gardens - meandering iris or day lilies. I didn't mean to be abrupt about trimming your maple tree. I just couldn't see the trunk of the tree and I know from many Japanese garden views that you have a great tree there. I have done bonsai before and sometimes I can't help myself and think of ways to prune trees. I like shaping trees.

There are both evergreen and deciduous (herbaceous) grasses - typically the deciduous ones get cut back in late winter or early spring and the evergreen ones do not. Deciduous grasses - in general - grow taller than evergreens and produce very showy seedheads. They also turn straw-colored in late fall and winter. Evergreen grasses tend to hold their color year round. Bronze colored grasses are most often of the genus Carex and are considered evergreen (or everbronze). Also most of the blues will be evergreen as well - the fescues, helichtotricon, elymus, etc. These only need occasional grooming to remove old fronds. Most grasses propagate easily from division which is typically done in spring. Some will self seed easily as well - like the bronze carex. Many named cultivars produce few or sterile seeds so harvesting may be futile. Blue coloring can vary from species to species and cultivar to cultivar - some will hold color better than others. In a hot, dry summer climate it is pretty common to have fescues and oat grass fade in their color intensity. btw, the Darke book is essential if you have an interest in growing OG's.

Use a machete! So, the issue is how to get it out of the ground first, so that you then can cut it up? Use a digging fork or a mattock, and it helps if you do it while the ground is moist, a la' Three Bears Style....not too wet and not too dry, but just right (moist). Here where I live in the Oklahoma outback, armadilloes will dig it up for you if there are some tasty grub worms luring underneath it or in it. So, all you need is a good, digging armadillo, but I'm assuming you don't have any of those. If you have a substantial amount of it to dig and divide and the digging part is extremely difficult, you might be able to get it out of the ground with a sod cutter, which you can rent from an equipment rental place. That might not be financially feasible if the monkey grass is the only sod you'd be cutting though. I don't know what it costs to rent a sod cutter nowadays. I love the way Monkey Grass looks but won't plant it here in our dense clay precisely because I'm afraid I'd never be able to dig and divide it!