Green is the colour

I know a lady who hates yellow flowers and another who loathes white ones.  Me? Well, I have no hang-ups about colour. I am cheap and cheerful, easy to please and content to mix and match colours with scant regard to tone, hue or matters of ‘good taste’ - whatever that is. I like bold and brassy, cool and sophisticated and I don’t mind mixing the two.  Life is a struggle against pain, there are too many long, grey winter days and in any case, more than one notable gardener has said that since nature does not create a colour scheme in the wild, why should we?  Nothing clashes and colour literally brightens us all up. 

The colour we often take for granted is of course green. This is probably because it is forms the very structure of our gardens and the power of it is that it blends in, is easy on the eye and has a very calming effect. It is not until we visit a green-free zone in a town or city that we feel a strong sense that something is missing.  

At flower shows there are often gardens where the only interest is a mixture of different shades of green in different textures.  I do ‘get it’ and quite like to see such creativity but it has never been ‘our thing’ at Springfield.  I started with a hot border, a cool border etc but over time the poppies seeds fly off and mix it all up and I am happy if the plants are happy.  

For me it is the pops of colour fizzing in front of a green backdrop that excites me.  There is one exception however (does that prove the rule?) and that is my small collection of hostas. They demonstrate perfectly how infinitely varied the colour green is and how our perceptions of green can be altered.

This hosta is outside our back door in a big pot and it is a delight every year.  In spring it awakes from its winter slumbers and erupts into tightly furled cigar shaped shoots and within a few weeks these open out to reveal acid lime green and deep green leaves which are glossy and corrugated in texture.  It is a joy to behold when I go out to the dustbin I cannot resist touching it.   It lights up the passage way leading to our garden. 

Of course as the season progresses we may see the results of a slug or two nibbling the edges of the leaves but keeping a hosta in a pot topped up with coarse gravel, minimises the invasion.  Sometimes I even put copper tape around the top of the pot and sprinkle over a few organic slug pellets, but not always. I also find that the thicker and glossier the leaves, the less the slugs attack them.  I assume the leaves are too tough for their little teeth.

The pots of hostas by our garden shed do well in the semi-shade but hostas seem to do well anywhere in our garden. I split them all this year and Doc dotted clumps around the garden.  That is the beauty of a perennial.  You buy a plant, grow it on and within a couple of seasons you can dig it up, cut it into sections resulting in free plants to plant out or give away .  

I am told that you can have too much of a good thing.  Number One Daughter bought a house from a hosta collector and yes, you’ve guessed it, the garden is full of them.  Needless to say, I can take a few off her hands.  She is all ‘hostered’ out….!