Deschampsia flexuosa Tatra Gold

The Deschampsia flexuosa 'Tatra Gold', also known as flexuous hair grass, is a small evergreen and perennial grass with an unconventional personality. It grows in a tousled and unkempt clump, perfectly bright, with an almost fluorescent acid yellow-green colour. Its summer flowering forms a haze of delicate panicles above its foliage, tinted with bronze-gold. This plant is attractive all year round, perfectly hardy and well adapted to acidic, sandy soils, even occasionally dry and infertile.

Deschampsia flexuosa, also known as Avenella flexuosa, is a perennial grass with a fibrous and turf-forming stump, non-spreading, belonging to the poaceae family. It is native to Europe, western Asia, Africa and northern America, where it grows in woods, pastures and rocks, on mainly siliceous soil. This extremely hardy plant is very vigorous on dry acidic soils.

The 'Tatra Gold' cultivar, from which it originates, is mainly distinguished by its reduced size and the novel colouration of its foliage. The plant forms an upright clump 30 to 50 cm (12 to 20in) tall when flowering, with a spread of 30 cm (12in). The evergreen leaves are very acid yellow-green, very bright, rolled, stiff and fine, 2 mm (1in) wide, very rough and often very long. In the centre of the foliage, large airy and spreading panicles appear from June to August, with flexuous branches. These panicles measure 5 to 12 cm (2 to 5in) in length and have a particularly delicate texture. They are carried by thin red stems. The numerous small flowers that compose them are initially yellow, then take on a more bronzed hue.

Deschampsia does not interfere with neighbouring plantings. It will give its best in a mixed border or in a semi-shaded rockery, just like Milium effusum 'Aureum', mixed with perennials with light and dark foliage such as ferns, or planted alongside purple heucheras or Imperata cylindrica 'Rubra'. It will happily accompany daffodils, jonquils, and numerous perennials (heathers, Japanese anemones, Lithodora, asters). It also grows very well in a large pot, enhanced by a wall covered in ivy or a flamboyant Virginia creeper in autumn.