It would be easier to buy a baby in a 4 inch pot. Slip it out of the pot and spread out the ground with a trowel. Maybe this one is worth sweating over a shovel and a chain saw. Pampas grass survives best when it's planted now.

Could be split up and made into a drift or other grouping, However, since Pampas Grass has been popping up as a roadside and stream bed weed in this area for some years now it might be better if people stopped planting it deliberately.

Yes, I'd heard that but have seen no evidence of it at all in this area and wondered if it was some other part of King county. Tons of Scotch broom and ox-eye daisies, but no pampas grass growing on it's own. I've never seen a purple plumed kind in the immediate area, even in a yard.

I think it's always easier to buy a new plant than to dig up an old one, but sometimes people want an established plant or hate to see it taken out - I'm just offering before I do it. I don't expect any takers.

Off the top of my head I remember seeing clumps as far south as a stream bed south of Seattle and as far west as in Fauntleroy Creek, across the street from the entrance to the ferry dock, where they were becoming thick enough to make me think they would cause an obstruction.

Elsewhere in the Seattle area many solitary clumps and small groups are to be seen just off the pavement along freeways and other wide roads - where as in a stream bed there will be some additional moisture (due to rainfall running across the pavement and concentrating on the edges of it).

Many here seem to be on the tender side so expansion very far from salt water may not occur. I had some fine clumps of 'Pumila' freeze out completely awhile back on Camano Island; winter damage to leaves of Pampas Grass seems to be usual over a wide area.

The type like you have is sold as Pink Pampas Grass. Like French Pink Pussy Willow, it is only partly pink.

Yeah, I'm about 400 feet above Seattle. I suspect that may make the difference. There are several version of the pink to purple one - I think you're thinking of the fluffy pink one. (http://gurneys.com/product.asp?pn=16422&bhcd2=1237328840)
Mine is less fluffy, and most years fully lavender - catches the light nicely.If it's survived the winter, or course. And if it's a good idea to even plant it. If you live lower down, as bboy says...probably not a good idea.

I haven't studied the matter in depth but I've been given the impression the plants are unisexual, the tinted thinnish inflorescences being staminate (male), the fluffy white ones pistillate (female); when I've seen pictures of fluffy clear pink plumes in catalogs of the character like that put out by Gurney I've assumed they were touched up pictures of white ones.

Here's a link with a picture that's pretty close - mine is more to the lavender or mauve - bisexual, according to this. I always thought it was male. I read somewhere that the purple kind was more likely to colonize, but it looks to me like they aren't a separate variety but just a different gender. It plumes in early winter, which is nice, but it's going anyway! Dead or alive, it's leaving my front yard.

Here is a link that might be useful: pink pampas