If you’re a floral professional, you’ve already felt and seen the increasing popularity of pampas grass in floral design work—especially for wedding and event work. Across the industry, this fluffy ornamental grass is being used in unique, ethereal, and jaw-dropping ways.

One thing is for sure, pampas grass easily makes a huge visual impact, and it’s right on trend. But that also makes finding and securing pampas grass at wholesale a challenge. This guide is here to help!

In this article, you’ll learn:

• Where to buy pampas grass wholesale (including sources that are one-of-a-kind or are great for backup when you can’t find it at wholesale prices)

• Where to buy dried pampas grass 

• How to dry pampas grass and store it until your event

• Favorite tips for working with pampas grass in wedding floral design

• Substitutions and alternatives to pampas grass when it’s hard to source

Feel free to skip around this resource to get the information you need for today.

Where to Buy Pampas Grass Wholesale

Have a great relationship with a wholesaler already? Check with your sales rep first! Floral wholesalers do an amazing job of serving the floral industry, designers, and event clients, and they can easily help you find beautiful, comparable substitutes to sought-after floral products as needed.

We also encourage building a relationship with any local flower farmers (including communicating your needs based on client trends) and seeking local sources for pampas grass farms whenever possible. 

If your regular wholesaler, local supplier, or local farm is out, here are reliable places to find pampas grass wholesale:

• Accent Decor (Accent Decor has a variety of colors and textures of wholesale dried pampas grass you can select from!)

• Mayesh

• Ronald’s Pampas Grass

• Regional Farms in California (This farm is owned by a Team Flower Member!)

• Florabundance 

To our Canadian friends, here are a couple recommended resources for wholesale pampas grass in Canada submitted by our Team Flower Staff and floral designer and Team Flower Member Carol-Anne Barnes:

• Florists Supply

• Ontario Flower Growers Cooperative

• Botanico

And if you’re looking for flower farms or wholesalers near you who can help you source pampas grass locally, send a request out to our community via the Team Flower Directory.

Have another supplier you’d like to recommend adding to this list? Join the discussion in the Team Flower Community or contact us via the red chat button on the right. 

Where to Buy Dried Pampas Grass 

Many of the supplier options listed above will also have dried pampas grass available. However, if you’re having trouble finding pampas grass wholesale or fresh in bulk, dried and preserved grass is an excellent alternative. 

Once you’ve exhausted your wholesale options, here is a list of where you can buy dried pampas grass. 

• Etsy

• Afloral

• Home goods retailers such as Wayfair, Amazon, West Elm, etc.

• Craft supply stores such as Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc.

However, it’s important to note there can be quite the retail markup. If you’re in a pinch and need pampas grass quickly for your event work, you can also consult the substitutions and alternatives list found later in this article.

Remember, to protect yourself and your floral business, if you have to pay retail prices to secure floral product for must-have designs, make sure your business isn’t losing money to cover the cost. 

Check out our Floral Pricing and Ordering online class for more information on how to accurately price and order or our Business Foundations online class for key basics that should be covered in your client contracts. 

Here’s How to Dry Pampas Grass and Store It Until Your Event

Are you currently in a market where pampas grass wedding decor is a highly requested trend? If so, and if you have the storage space, you may want to consider buying it in bulk when it’s in season and drying and storing the grass yourself. 

And it’s really easy to do! You simply dry pampas grass the way you would most other floral products:

1. Tie several pieces together with a rubber band, string, ribbon—whatever you have on hand.

2. Flip the pieces upside down and hang to dry for about 2 weeks.

You should dry your pampas grass cuttings in a warm, dry place with plenty of air circulation (so a cooler of course is not the place for drying or storing pampas, but a shed, garage, workshop, or basement might be!).

For storing pampas grass plumes, find a safe, dry place where you don’t mind a little mess. Pampas grass sheds quite a bit (without following the hairspray trick below), so this is something to keep in mind. 

And before investing in a large bulk order of pampas grass to dry and store, we highly recommend doing a test with a few plumes in your drying and storing area to make sure the process works well for you significantly before drying a big bulk order for an event.

But as long as your pampas plumes dry correctly and have plenty of dry air circulation in their storage location, you should be able to set them aside until you’re ready to create your pampas grass arrangements and wedding designs. Fluff before use, and you’re good to go!

Favorite Tips for Working with Pampas Grass in Wedding Floral Design

Looking for tried-and-tested tips for working with pampas grass for wedding decor and more? Our team called on our community of knowledgeable and kindhearted floral professionals for their input, and here are their top tips.

1. Use hairspray. This tip comes from multiple floral pros in our community and beyond: Spraying pampas grass with inexpensive hairspray will help eliminate shedding, keeping your pampas plumes full and your studio much tidier. If you’re drying and storing your own pampas grass, it’s recommended that you spray pieces with hairspray before storage.
   
   When ready to use your stored dried grass, simply fluff up the plumes and reapply hairspray if needed. (Don’t be afraid to reapply this magic trick as much as you need to in order to keep plumes intact.)

2. Big black trash or garbage bags are a lifesaver. Team Flower Member Jennifer Parker stores her pampas grass in large garbage bags to keep it contained, minimizing the shedding mess.
   
   Even when plumes are stored in warm temperatures, Jennifer finds they come out well for use on design day. This would also be an excellent way to transport fresh plumes on the day-of event to keep your vehicle clean.

3. Group your pampas grass in bunches. If the grass you ordered isn’t giving that full and fluffy look with a single plume, or if your floral mechanics require it, group several plumes and tape them together (another tip from Jennifer!).
   
   Then, design with those stem groupings as if they were one piece. This can be truly helpful when working with dried and stored pampas that’s now in need of some added volume.

Pampas Grass Substitutes 

Unfortunately, especially if you’re dealing with an event date around the corner, sometimes you’ll need to find a fast pampas grass alternative. 

In the United States, pampas grass is more easily obtained via wholesale in the fall, and if you have a client that has an early summer event and you’ve had trouble securing enough for event day (even through non-wholesale channels), you may need to seek out the next best alternative.

In addition, in some areas of the world, pampas grass is considered an invasive species and may not be usable in your designs (or isn’t legally usable without deseeding first). 

If you run into sourcing issues—or plant safety regulation issues—these alternatives below can help.

But first, an important note here: While some of these items can be requested from your floral wholesaler or local flower farm, some of these substitutes aren’t readily available through a wholesale bulk order. The suggested alternatives below may require foraging (with permission of course!), browsing availability on Etsy, or other alternative sourcing methods. 

Since pampas grass truly is its own look altogether, not all the suggestions below will be a direct substitution or comparable in every design—in plume size, scale and/or length, or texture. If it’s an important element to your client, you should buy in bulk in advance if possible, storing carefully until the event.

And to that note, if you are in a pinch, some of these alternates may work best using the bunching or clumping tip above to give your pampas grass alternatives a full and fluffy look. Choose what’s best for you and your client based on your design needs, and make sure to do your sourcing research and plan accordingly! 

List of Pampas Grass Alternatives:

• Oriental feather grass

• Feather reed grass

• African love grass

• Muhly grass

• Giant wildrye grass

• Bunny grass (while bunny grass has a different look than pampas, it may give that ethereal and airy feel for some substitution needs)

• Ostrich plumes

• Wheat

• Bleached cipressina (dried)

• Natural or bleached eulalia aurea (dried)

• Bleached leather leaf fern (dried)

• Bleached bamboo/areca palm (dried)

• Stypha (dried)

• Wild oats (dried)

Well-Loved Pampas Grass Decor Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon

Much like mason jars, greenery-only centerpieces, and the wonderfully classic, must-have beauty of peonies, pampas grass wedding decor and design trends will be with us for a while—and rightfully so. Those dramatic, fluffy plumes offer a serious amount of mood, personality, and vibrancy from the smallest of personal flowers to the largest of floral installations.

Having pampas grass substitutes, handy tricks and tips, and reliable places to source this sought-after grass (with planned back-ups!) in your floral design toolbox is crucial. Save this article to reference back to later, and join us over on the Team Flower Community as we work together to solve our sourcing issues, share tips, and love the world through flowers.

Design: Memories Bound Floral

Photography: Outland Weddings