i wanted to add some tall grass to go around the edge of the water, i did this by using a cylinder, scalling it to make it narrow and flat.

The using soft selection and scale again, i narrowed the end to a point, and the bent it, so it was quite so straight.

i then copied it in a rotation pattern, and scaled each blade of grass so they were not the same size, random editing made the grass apear different, this was the grouped and copied several times over.