Agree. Tying up always looks worse, in fact it looks just awful, no need for a picture.

Cultprits: too much shade, soil too rich, use of fertilizers or too moist = any of these will cause weak stems and/or too much or too fast top growth and too much weight for the stems. Its also unhealthy for the plants.

I still have this problem every year. Last summer was so bad that I had to cut them to the ground with a electric chainsaw(BTW it worked great). today I decided to try this:

I am gonna keep the sides trimmed. It actually looks pretty good/alot neater IMO. Here's some pics. The first pic is before and the bottom one is after. Hopefully this will solve my falling problem

Update: I have about 15 zebra grasses planted all though my landscape and yesterday I cut half of them down to the ground. BUT this time I am applying roundup to them. Just giving up on them. Nothing I tried seems to prevent them from falling. Each year they have got worse. There is about 5 of them that dont do this so will be keeping them for now. I have several sun loving plants near the ones that keep falling like, spirea, daylillies and iris, There are some of these plants that dont look to good because when the zebra grass fell it drowned out all of the sunlight from them :(

Also the zebra grass gets so big that when I cut them down its alot of material to dispose of. Cutting them yesterday they almost remind me of bamboo in a way. Also I noticed cutting them down they have some kind of fungus too. I also have about 20 maiden grasses on my landscape. The maiden grass is my favorite ornamental grass. A whole lot less maintenance, never have problems with falling and no signs of any fungus either. I will be transplanting maiden grass in late winter 2020 to the areas I am killing off the zebra grass.

BTW : I tried digging the zebra grass up with a shovel. Nope lol. MAter of fact I just bougth a brand new shovel and i bent it trying to dig it out. It will be going back to home depot. I finally gave up and cut them down and used round up very heavy on the base and the roots that I exposed. I am hoping this kills them. I will keep reapplying roundup until they are toast. I will never plant zebra grass again.

Very strange! Are they planted in full sun? My workplace has a huge clump of zebra grass and it never flops. My neighbors up the street also have one and it looks great. I love the look of it but I didn't want something really tall so I planted Little Zebra last year and I am very happy with it so far. I am sorry that you have having such trouble with it.

'Strictus' "Porcupine grass" has a much more spiky upright habit while the 'Zebrinus' is more like a fountain with relaxed habit. They both look superficially similar when small but it makes a difference when the get big.

From my general experience, the second Autumn after planting the Miscanthus grows close to full height, the third Autumn is as good as it gets as far as shape and height. By the fifth Autumn the grass plant may get too wide, sloppy, and heavy and can fall over much easier. The grass is not going to improve at this point, just get worse with an empty center. The only solution is too start over with smaller pieces. You can chop up the plant, may not be easy as they root mass may be very heavy, and does take work to split off pieces. Or just buy new ones. Even killing them leaves a heavy mass that will need to break down.

Everything has it's positives and negatives, depends on what you want.

These zebra plants have been died for about a yr now and it was still a pain in the but to dig them out. After digging them out it seems like I know what the problem was, The roots/tubers was just growing right on top of each other above the soil. Still not 100% sure why I had such bad luck with them. My advice is for anyone planting them dont do it lol. OR if you do dont cut them back to the ground in late winter like I always did but just leave them alone. Maybe that was my problem??

I was going to just let them rot and not dig them up but really needed the space to plant some other plants like hyrgnageas and other maiden grasses.

I love my zebra grass! I may have fertilized when I first planted years ago, but not since. I also don't water. They are in full sun. I'm in zone 6B. Late fall/early winter I'd keep it long through mild snow, but cut it down to about 8" if we were expecting significant snow. Last year we tied it with thin fishing line, which worked great - couldn't see it and it was perfect. This year we used 20# line which is thicker and easier to see, but still can't see it from farther away, and I think it would be better for the plant as it would be less likely to cut into it.

KT. Mine looks awesome but around this time of the year is when they start going downhill.. Already starting to get fungus spots on them and they lean so much after a rain so its a matter of time before they completey fall over.I have my hedgetrimmer on stand by. lol.