Cordyline Festival Grass isn’t really a grass. It’s more like an exotic agave, in fact. A happy plant has long, grassy leaves (hence the name) that are wonderful shades of glossy deep red and magenta. They don’t revert like some New Zealand flax varieties, so the color you get at the nursery is the color you’ll have years later. The plants survived moderate frosts of around -7°C/20°F (that’s moderate for Sacramento – all you people in North Dakota please stop laughing!).
We planted a couple of Festival Grass Cordylines with some low water use plants: Leucadendron salignum ‘Golden Tip’, Penstemon ‘Margarita BOP’, Salvia officinalis, Eriogonum grande rubescens… Although the Festival Grass survived, it didn’t enjoy it much. They lost their lustrous, deep magenta leaves. They refused to bloom this year. They didn’t increase much in size, never attaining the touted three feet by three feet. After two years, they were still under two feet and weren’t planning any lush growth any time soon. Time for a rescue.
They’ve been moved into pots and will become accent plants on the patio once we build it. The plants looked better as soon as they were moved and given a nice watering. Kind of like someone rescued from the desert.