Learning To Love Green

Forget the razzle-dazzle of brazen yellows, blazing reds and shocking purples, the colour of sophistication and quiet beauty is green, says Graham Rice

- Graham Rice

GREEN is the predominant colour in all our gardens. Foliage is green, our lawns are green, some people even paint their sheds green or lay green plastic turf – so why would we also want green flowers? There are two answers.

The first is that green flowers have an unexpected quiet beauty that is always appealing. Clearly, they don’t stand out as scarlet or yellow flowers do but the fact that our first glance misses them and then they register with us a moment later gives their presence a special kick.

Plants with green flowers also allow us to create some intriguing plant associations by grouping them with coloured foliage, in particular bronze and coppery shades, as well as silver and grey.

Perfect for arranging

The second answer as to the value of green flowers comes with the discipline of flower arranging. In classic flower arrangements, in more contemporary hand-tied and other informal bouquets and in smaller, place-setting-scale posies, we get to inspect all our flowers a little more closely than we do in our beds and borders. And on this more intimate scale we come to appreciate the structure in green flowers, the arrangement of the petals and the other floral parts through subtlety of colour, without the dazzling distraction of the rest of the rainbow.

Greater variety than you think