I would plant them about 6 inches apart, staggered. They multiply quickly and fill in.
What I've done, to fill in a large spot, is buy a fairly large container and divide it up. You can often get a dozen or more plants from one pot. You can do this with many ground covers, including vinca, chameleon plant, and so on. I'll be dividing some of my existing plants this spring to fill in some bare areas.

Lots of people thin it out and throw it away, :(. You might put an ad in a free shopper that you would be willing to thin it out of peoples yards for the plants. Can't hurt.

And 6 inches sound about right.

Timothy

One thing to consider, its hard to kill the stuff and it does multiply rapidly. I've yanked, dug and mowed it to the ground and it still comes up. The blooms are pretty though. lol

Timothy is right. If you know anyone growing monkey grass, they'd probably be happy to share enough to give you a good start. I give this stuff away each year by the wheel barrow full. I'd offer you some, but already have a friend with dibs on my extras this spring. I'm sure you can easily get enough from friends to line your driveway. Whatever you do though, do not plant it anywhere near a flower bed! Can you guess I learned this the hard way? :-)

I have moved mine around, like I have the vinca, and given it away and used it for garden drivebys and it is tough, versatile stuff. I have it as a border mixed in with grape hyacinths and love the way the hydcinths come up first and provide color, followed by the grass, that then flowers and later has berries. They seem to do just fine together, too.
Other things I like along the street and drive are
Iceplant
Black Eyed Susans
Oregano
Rosemary (Arp variety)
But I don't like lamb's ear as it melts out and makes a mess.

Please don't buy any monkey grass! I've got tons of it!!
You can have all you want. I'll even help you dig it up if you don't mind digging. (so easy)
email me bewize@cox.net and I'll give you my phone number.
I'm on the southside of OKC.

Great offer Debbie!!!!! :)

See that solved a problem and saved a ton of cash.

I believe to that if you trim the tops off that it will help it to send more runners out, thus spreading more quickly and filling in sooner.

Don't you just love when we can help each other!!!

Have a great day,
Timothy

Frank, do you have enough plants yet? I might be able to get you some too, but in Tulsa.

Moni

Folks,

Looks like I got lucky: a local person has told me where there is tons of monkey grass growing on some empty property out in the sticks. It appears that the lot once had a house, but it's long gone. The monkey grass has taken over...

Many thanks for the help.

I also have lots of monkey grass. As long as it is tended to, it looks really good. If ignored though, it clumps up, spreads out, and looks a little on the wild side. I just dug up half of mine (no problem), and am transplanting it to other areas of my yard borders. It is not hard to manage if you do a little bit with it. It simply is a wonderful, manageable, tolerant, and beautiful border or ground cover for a shady area.

Just name me one other plant that has the qualities of this.

Chuckiebtoo

DebbieSue or Frank, do you have any 'extra' monkey grass left? I live the idea of lining the drive with it.
I will make sure and put in a barrier too. :)

Jerri

Hi Jerri,

I'm afraid I haven't yet had the time to get the monkey grass I mentioned in the post above: I'm still moving in and getting things going in my new home. I suspect it might be awhile yet...

Which one comes out head-to-head? Monkey grass or Bermuda?

I've been trying to get rid of monkey grass around a couple of river birch trees for about 5 years, and it still comes up every spring.

I like the idea of edging the drive with it. Will it run over the bermuda, will the bermuda invade the monkey grass, or is it a dead heat?

Hopefully someone can help me. I planted monkey grass (bought from Home Depot before I read the previous posts!) about 3 months ago. It isn't growing at all. I water it 3 times a week but no growth. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? I planted 6 inches apart and nothing has filled in. I'm about ready to pull it all up and try something else!

What kind of soil is it in and how much rain are you getting?

It is just regular brown dirt that I tilled. I live in Oklahoma City and it rained like crazy for 2 months. Been dry for 3 weeks but I'm watering 3 times a week when there is no rain.

Hi everyone, just a quick intro before I address dewa2705 regarding the monkey grass dilemma. I actually signed up here, after lurking for 2 weeks, just so I could reply to this post! ;) Everyone seems so congenial and knowledgeable.......especially okiedawn. Love your posts!

So far, I've found this GardenWeb forum extremely informative and entertaining. Being a newbie to raised bed veggie gardening, I need all the help I can get with all the challenges that central OK weather has presented this year.

Anyway, here's my take on "Monkey Grass"....I had some bestowed upon me about 14 years ago, after my brother purchased a house and didn't like it growing along his walkway. So, now I have LOTS and LOTS of it - and in beautiful full bloom at the moment. I wanted to clear some of it out earlier this year and offer it on Craigslist. But SO said, "NO! Leave it alone." Grrrrrrrrrr I was just trying to clear a space for something else to grow.

What I actually have is Lily Turf (liriope) which is extremely drought tolerant and loves shade or full sun.
Not fussy about the soil, either! My advice would be to stop watering it (it doesn't exactly grow overnight) and stop worrying about it.

I have plenty to share, if you're interested....PM me for details. But, I would recommend waiting until things cool down a bit, so as to avoid major transplant shock. Also, since it is perennial, HD does offer a one year warranty on your purchase, if it fails to grow.

dewa I am in OKC too. I have lots of Monkey Grass. But, most has some bermuda spread in to it.

If you want to dig some out, come anytime... after 3 PM.

Email me through this site.

Moni

dewa, Since you're in OKC and we know y'all have had oodles and oodles of rain this year, I wouldn't worry about the monkey grass. Often, new plants will spend time settling in and developing root systems long before they will show topgrowth above the soil. There is a phrase, often applied to perennials, that would be a good description of what you likely are seeing. It is "the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, and the third year it leaps". I think if you'll be patient, it will do just fine. Gardening is not an activity that necessarily will give you instant results, unless you buy full-grown plants to begin with.

As long as your ground cover grass has good healthy color, I imagine it is just fine. If it gets really pale or washed out, it might need to be fertilized. That's just a guess since we don't know how nutritious your soil was when you transplanted the plants into the ground. Sometimes too much rain (or irrigation) can interfere with root growth, too. This happens when excess moisture clogs up the plants' root systems, preventing them from taking up nutrition. It wouldn't surprise me if some folks in the parts of OK that had lots of rain in June and July and even into August may have seen some rain-related plant malnutrition this summer. There's nothing you can do except wait for the soil to dry out so the roots can absorb nutrients.

I agree with TouCan2's suggestion that you stop watering it quite so much. Your monkey grass, which I assume is Liriope, is one of the south's beloved plants because it is so tolerant of our changeable weather. It won't die and you can't kill it, so just be patient and let it settle in and grow. Infant humans do not go from newborn to full-sized in three or four months, and neither do most plants, other than some very short-lived annual flowers, herbs or veggies.

I think it will be fine if you'll just give it a chance to grow. When I planted some here our first or second year after we moved into our home, it didn't grow much at all the first year (which was, admittedly, a very dry drought year) but was fine after that.

TouCan2, I just wanted to say hi and welcome to the forum, and thanks for the kind words.

Moni, That's a nice bermuda grass warning! lol It would be such a good lawn turf if only it would stay where it belongs and not creep and crawl into areas where other plants are growing.

Some friends of ours once said they were going to go to the store and buy some bermuda sod for their new front yard. I was horrified and told them not to buy it and that I'd dig it out of the flower beds and give it to them and they could use their money on something else. We killed 2 birds with one stone---I got the flower beds cleaned out and they got bermuda plugs for free.

Dawn

I also threatened to craigslist our monkey grass just last weekend, but DH said he'd prefer I offer it on this forum first. I've been terribly busy at work this month so this is my first post for a while ... but felt compelled to echo "do not buy monkey grass, send me a PM and bring your shovel!"

Hello, I just recently purchased a home that has several plants and trees that I'm not familiar with. I am new to gardening and want to take care of my new landscaping.

The monkey grass in my back yard is my first question and found this thread to be helpful. I too live in OKC near Lake Hefner. From what I gather during this season, watering once a week should be ok. I have been watering every other day as long as there is no rain. So I will be cutting down on watering.

I'm posting a photo of my monkey grass and wanted to know if the yellow dead looking blades at the bottom is normal? Can I trim this stuff off? Is this a result of over watering?

Thanks for the advice in advance.

What month did you buy the monkey grass with the house??? :)

If it wasn't cut down last fall/winter, the dead looking blades are from then.

I bet, you can just pull them off without any problem.

Moni

The monkey grass came with the house, I purchased in August. I just want to make sure how much I should water it. I will see if the old stuff just pulls out.

Tommy, I am in OKC also near Lake Hefner. I never water my monkey grass and it doesn't seem to mind. The old stuff on the bottom is last year's growth - in late winter, before the new growth starts or is just starting to appear, shear off the old grass. That will keep a tidy clump that doesn't have the scraggly brown part. I've used scissors, bush trimmers, hedge shears, and a weed eater to do the trimming in the winter. Weed eater is fastest!

I have bunches of monkey grass for sale