When to prune grasses back and how to do it?

A common question we get is when to prune your grasses for winter. In reality it can be as soon as that plant dies back to the ground. I personally use the grass’ foliage as a winter interest, so I will wait until the winter winds beat then up into a mess. Then I tie a string around the top and cut back to within an inch or two of the ground. For evergreen grasses, I just clean out the dead foliage. With Pampass grass, I wait until spring, using it’s foliage as a mulch to help it survive winter since it’s more tender than other grasses like Switch grass, Japanese Silver grass or Fountain grasses in our area. Below is a video I did to demonstrate how to cut back the different types of grasses.