How to Build an All-Green Garden
From time to time most gardeners long for an all-green garden. It is a longing for clarity and simplicity, for a rest from the business of gardening. The in¬spiration may be found in a formal garden: picture a white-painted weatherboard house with a long veran¬dah overlooking still trees and emerald lawns striped with the shadows of beautifully clipped hedges. Or a more intensively planted garden may appeal, perhaps a dappled grove carpeted with choice woodland plants. Whatever the inspiration, an all-green garden is almost certain to be restful and easy on the eye. There is an easy-going naturalness about green gar¬dens, even when made in a formal style.
Green gardens happily lean toward formality because in the absence of other colours they are free to fall back on the elements of texture and design. Some of the most striking green gardens are exclusively topiary gardens, which can be breathtaking displays of trained and tailored evergreens.
In a less formal context there is a huge range of all-green plants to choose from; plants, that is, which have green flowers as well as green foliage. Look at all the different greens in a flowering plant of Euphorbia amygdaloides robbiae or Alchemilla mollis; there is everything from dark green to pale grey-green and lime. A good green garden can incorporate every shade; emerald, olive and khaki all have their uses.
A green garden is a way of making the most of the simplest palette on offer, but it will also benefit from other discreet colours such as brown. There are brown, black and green barks to be had, and there is the russet and silver indumentum underneath the leaves of some species of rhododendron. Grey foliage is not always sucessful in a green garden, as most grey-leaved plants are sun lovers and come from more naturally colourful plant communities.
Do not banish colour from a green garden. As with any single-colour garden, a little of the colour’s close relatives (yellow and blue) can be incorporated with good effect. White also blends in very comfortably with green. Tiarella, Aruncus, Solomon’s seal and primroses all offer a gentle touch of colour without moving away from that green-upon-green woodland feel. For the palest pinks, add Tellimas or dicentras.
Variegated foliage has a place in a green garden, but can by contrast look very artificial when surrounded by simple greens. It should be used sparingly. Most variegated foliage shows its best colours in full light and tends not to be successful in shady gardens. Slight shade is less of a problem to these plants and a dull corner will benefit from bright variegations.
Tags: colours, emerald lawns, gardener, green flowers, green gardens, green plants, greens, grey foliage, leaves, palette