Vetiver Grass
Chrysopogon zizanioides
Slow to take hold anywhere cool, and young plants need covering before hard frost — patience is most of what it costs.
- Type
- Grass · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray · Green
- Sunlight
- Full sun throughout.
- Watering
- Drought-tolerant once established.
- Feeding
- A light feed in the first year only.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- July
- Pruning
- Cut back to 10-15 cm in early spring.
- Mar–Jul Spring Growth
- Jul–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Winter Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Winter Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 23.6 in
- In-row spacing
- 23.6 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 6 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A dense fibrous mat
- Working depth
- 5–10 ft
- Can reach
- 13 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 24 in–4 ft across, about 1–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 12 in of soil
Thousands of fine roots knit the top of the soil into a turf, which is what holds a bank together and what makes an established clump so hard to lift. Prairie grasses send a few roots far below the mat as well.
Roots that go straight down three metres and more, in a curtain rather than a spread, which is why a vetiver hedge is planted across a slope to stop it washing away. It is also why the clump stays exactly where it is put.
Figures recorded for Vetiver Grass itself. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Lemongrass, Ylang Ylang, Comfrey, Pineapple Sage
Grasses, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com