Plant in full sun or partial shade. Once established, Deer Grass can go the entire summer without irrigation, but it can also tolerate regular garden water which keeps the foliage nearly evergreen. It is cold hardy to around 0 °F. This grass can be left alone for a natural look but best cut back in late winter to early spring to allow fresh new foliage to emerge. This is an extremely adaptable plant that can grow it hot dry xeric gardens as a companion to native or other mediterranean climate plants or can be used in the occasionally to regularly irrigated meadow, where it can be an accent or the common thread that knits the meadow together. It is a great grass used in mass for height in a natural meadow or as a specimen used sparingly with native shrubs and is great natural habitat for attracting birds and butterflies into the garden and according John Greenlee notes in his book American Meadow Garden, that it can also tolerate direct first seaside exposure.

Muhlenbergia rigens is found growing naturally in well-drained soils in many plant communities below 7,000 feet from near the Oregon-California border south to Mexico and east to Texas. It is thought that this wide range may be because the plant was encouraged and managed using fire by native Americans who used the long flower stems in basketry. The German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber (1739-1810) named the genus for Gotthilf Heinrich (Henry) Ernst Muhlenberg (1753-1815) who was American born but returned to his ancestral Germany for schooling and later returned to America. He was an ordained Lutheran minister but devoted his free time to the study of the botany. The specific epithet is the Latin word for "rigid" or "stiff", likely in reference to the stiff stalks of the flowering stems. The common name Deer Grass is not because the plant is a preferred browse plant but because deer like to lay on the mounds. The long stems of the inflorescence were used by many Native American tribes for basketry and the seeds ground food.

We have grown and sold this durable native grass since 1993. 

The information about Muhlenbergia rigens displayed on this web page is based on our research conducted in the nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also include observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share cultural information that would aid others in growing this plant.