Blue Fescue Festuca glauca (Festuca ovina var. glauca)

Blue fescue is a small cool season tussock from European mountain country, forming a tight rounded hummock of fine needle like blades in a steely powder blue. The colour is the reason to buy it and it is unusual in this range, since almost everything else here is green. It is used in repeat planting where that blue has to read as a mass: gravel gardens, rockeries, the front edge of a border, strips between pavers, and shallow pots where a neat mound is wanted rather than an arching clump.

Grow it in grit, or not at all

Nearly every problem with this plant in Australia traces back to heat, humidity and wet feet. Through Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, the tablelands and cool inland districts it holds colour and behaves itself. Through a humid subtropical summer in Brisbane or on the northern coast it browns out through the centre and rots, and that is the failure mode stated plainly: it dies from the middle in warm wet weather, and no drainage fix rescues it once the humidity arrives. Plant it in full sun on lean gritty free draining soil, raised if your ground is heavy, with gravel rather than damp organic mulch pushed up against the crown. Space plants about 25 to 30 centimetres apart for a continuous low edge. Keep water and fertiliser modest, because a well fed heavily watered plant turns green, floppy and short lived. Even in the right climate, clumps hollow out from the centre after a few years, so lift and divide them in late winter, or plan on replacement rather than nursing a bare ring along.

Blue fescue against the mat rushes

If you want that low mounded edging habit in a humid or subtropical garden, buy Lomandra Lime Tuff instead. It holds a similar tight rounded shape in a row, but it is a mat rush rather than a cool season grass, and it takes humidity, wet spells, poor soil and neglect that would finish fescue inside a season. The trade is colour, since Lime Tuff is bright lime green and nothing here substitutes for blue. Fescue will hold a shallow gravel batter or a rockery face once the tufts knit together, but on a steep raw slope, and anywhere the summer is wet, Lomandra longifolia puts down the deep binding root plate that a small fibrous rooted tussock cannot match. And if the site is damp, Carex appressa is the tussock for it; fescue in wet ground is a dead plant waiting.

Combing out and feeding lightly

Do not shear it like a grass. Comb the dead tan blades out by hand or with a spring rake in late winter, which clears the thatch and leaves the blue foliage clean without cutting live tips flat and leaving brown ends across the top of the mound. Shear off the wheat coloured flowering stems as they appear if you want the foliage colour to stay uninterrupted through summer. Feed once in early spring with a light application of slow release fertiliser and leave it at that, since lean conditions are what keep the colour blue and the habit tight. Browse the rest of the range in lomandra and grasses.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 5 sizes, from 68mm up to 140mm, priced from $16.95 to $16.95 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. These are younger plants, priced for planting in quantity, and they establish quickly once in the ground. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to low water gardens.