Nothing boosts your spirits in early spring like the first daffodils, tulips or grape hyacinths poking through the ground. But the honeymoon’s often over when the flowers fade and the foliage turns yellow. If you’re treating your bulbs as perennials, there’s nothing you can do but wait for the foliage to fade as the plants gather nourishment for next year’s blooms.
 David Jones of South Carolina thinks ornamental grasses and spring-blooming bulbs are a great plant combo. He interplants hakonechloa, fountain grass (Pennisetum spp.) and eulalia grass (Miscanthus spp.) with his bulbs. When the bulbs first poke through, the grasses are still dormant. But after the bulbs bloom, the grasses’ emerging foliage is large enough to help disguise the yellowing leaves.
Ornamental grasses work with more than just spring-blooming bulbs, though. One of the biggest advantages to using ornamental grasses in a mixed perennial bed is that many grasses bloom in late summer, which is the time when other perennials start to decline. Adding grasses can extend the season of a bed.
 Plant purple-leaved fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’) alongside spring-blooming bulbs, columbine (Aquilegia spp.) and a mix of early, midsummer and late-blooming daylilies and cannas for a display of blooms from the last frost until the first.
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