NOW THE TREND IS LANDSCAPING WITH GRASSES.

Byline: JANE GATES Gardening

SANTA CLARITA - Grasses have recently experienced an explosion in popularity.

Designers, homeowners and commercial landscapers suddenly have discovered the beauty and ease of using grasses in landscaping.

For years most people thought of grasses as lawns or weeds. (Yes, we have plenty of those, too.) Yet the poaceae family is one of the largest and includes flamboyant giants, curious miniatures, colorful leaves, graceful forms and, of course, the oh-so-proper lawn grasses.

Grasses can add colorful foliage, graceful motion or fluffy flower heads. Different kinds can grow in all conditions, from soggy wet to bone dry. Most, however, are resilient and require little care other than cutting back in the winter if they go dormant.

Here are just a few ideas for grasses that will do well in this area. If you want something graceful as a focal point or a tall background, look to one of the miscanthus family. They require regular water, can take full sun or some shade and grow very easily.

You have an impressive choice of leaf colors and shapes. Some are narrow and others flat. Some have decorative bands that go up and down in whites, greens and yellows - or right across the leaf, making stripes like the strictus or zebrinus varieties.

Also, for regular water and full sun, consider the shorter muhlenbergia capillaris with its delicate puffs of pink in the autumn (to 3 feet tall), or the imperata cylindrica rubra (Japanese blood grass) that grows about 18 inches and turns brilliant red at the tips.

For water gardens or damp areas, there is a whole selection of low growing grasses in a range of colors from whites, yellows and oranges, through reds, browns and greens - all to be found in the carex family. The juncus effusus spiralis corkscrews its round green leaves like springs.

Cyperus alternifolius (umbrella plant) offers small umbrellas of leaves (and also grows happily with less water on land). Its cousin, cyperus papyrus, sends up long umbrellas from 5 to 15 feet tall.

Although pampas grass (cortaderia selloana) is both highly ornamental and popular, I recommend trying one of the less usual grasses. Pampas grass is now officially registered as a ``pest'' in California. It self-seeds easily, causing not only constant weeding problems in the garden but also escaping into the wild and pushing out many of our indigenous plants.

If you have a really dry area that needs something unusual, consider stipa (nassella) tenuissima or nassella pulchra for fine delicate ``horsetail'' clumps of thin grass. In the autumn they bloom with a gracefully shaped inflorescence. The flowers on grasses are tiny and massed in big panicles so as to create plumes or puffs or long split needles. Most all are excellent in dried flower arrangements, whether spray painted or left natural.

Consider blue oat grass (helictotrichon sempervirens) for blue-colored foliage, or pennisetum setaceum (red fountain grass) for mahogany reds. (Avoid most of the green fountain grasses as they tend to seed themselves all over the place and are difficult to weed out once established.) Smaller grasses in blues can be found in the fescue family. Try covering a small steep hill with the red fescue that grows like regular lawn grass but can be left uncut so the leaves cascade over each other.

This is just a sampling of the wonderful possibilities available in the grass family. Use them in gardens by themselves, to soften the edges of cement work or playfully mixed in with flowers.