Green party
It’s not just grass that helps keep your garden looking green, writes David Overend.
Nature is green – lots of greens and lots of shades of green, but youhavetolookhardtofinda plant with green flowers. Yet they are out there, from tasteful hydrangeas to vivid euphorbias, Nature has done a very good job to meet the needs of the discerning gardener.
Those spurges (Euphorbia) can prove to be the backbone of a perennial bed. They are among the most tolerant and versatile plants available to the gardener. They take the rough with the smooth, the rich soil with the poor. No sunless corner is too dark for them – they will grow anywhere and defy all weathers and conditions.
For instance, E wulfenii is certainly impressive – a big, domineering mass of blue-green foliage makes this a stunning perennial, ideal for the middle or even the back of a bed or border.
Those wonderful leaves look striking at any time of year and in early spring yellow-lime green flowers start to show. Eventually, in mid-summer, they can stand on top of four-feet-tall stems.
For best results grow E wulfenii in moist but well-drained soil, in full sun. It originates from the Mediterranean so it prefers a dryish soil rather than a dampish one – make it happy by incorporating gravel into its planting hole and apply a gravel mulch to help protect the base of the plant from rotting.
Then there is Moluccella laevis, the Bells-of-Ireland, a summer flowering annual, native to Turkey, Syria and the Caucasus, cultivated for its spikes of tiny, white flowers surrounded by apple green calyces. The rounded leaves are pale green.
Moluccella laevis will grow rapidly to stand perhaps a metre tall. This member of the mint family likes full sun and plenty of moisture. It self-seeds (so there should always be plenty of seedlings appearing the following year) and looks just as good in a container as it does in the soil. Flowerarrangers are among its greatest admirers.
Also Helleborus cyclophyllus produces rather intriguing, yellowish-green flowers, which look wonderfully out of the ordinary. Give it a moist, fertile, soil with a good crumbly structure and it should thrive.
And then there is Alchemilla mollis, aka lady’s mantle, a very popular garden plant, although it can get out of hand – it self-seeds wonderfully and doesn’t seem to bother where it grows and can tolerate most soils. The tiny yellowy-green blooms are loved by flower-arrangers.
And then there’s grass...