This year the Chelsea Flower Show was all about foliage and the colour green, a colour typically known for its calming properties, creating harmony and growth. It’s also a colour of hope, nature and life, at the start of the year we all look for the first green shoots, the tips of tulips and daffodils starting to poke through the soil, a sign that spring is on its way. Using a predominately green colour gives the garden a relaxing feel, creating a small oasis in an ever increasingly busy world, somewhere to relax after a long day at work.

M & G Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show 2019

Creating interest with a green palette in a garden comes from playing with the textures and shades of green. Plants such as the delicate, feathery, grey-green foliage of Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’ together with the bigger, slightly furry leaved Stachys byzantina ‘Big Ears’ or keeping on the grey-green theme the smaller leaved Stachys bysantina ‘Silver Carpet’ were much in evidence. Along with the rounder mid-green leaved (they always makes me think that someone has just drawn round a hand) Alchemilla mollis, perfect for catching raindrops on and its fluffy acid green flowers, all of which are ideal for a sunny border.

Walker’s Forgotten Quarry Garden

On the M&G garden, a shady woodland space, had the large palmate leaves of Rodgersia podophylla mixed in with more delicate ferns such as the bright green plumy Matteuccia struthiopteris (the shuttlecock fern) and Osmunda regalis (the Royal Fern). Dotted through were large acid green umbels Angelica archangelica and fluffy grasses and under planted with broadleaved hostas, and small mounds of Euphorbia palustris. All lead to creating a calming space you could imagine wandering through.

Geums at the Chelsea Flower Show

Green is the perfect foil to show off other colours, particularly when choosing one colour, the Wedgewood and Walker’s Forgotten Quarry Gardens choose apricot and orange-rust colours respectively as the main flower colour. Using geums from the delicate apricot of ‘Mai Tai’ to the mid-orange of ‘Totally Tangerine’ and the vibrant ‘Prinses Juliana’ set off by a backdrop of plants such as Euphorbia mellifera (honey spurge) with its orange flowers. Along with the spires of verbascums and the slender leaved irises, ‘Cable Car’ is one of my favourite coppered toned varieties or for a delicate apricot ‘Captain Crunch’ has a very ephemeral feel.

Welcome to Yorkshire Garden

The Welcome to Yorkshire garden had grassy areas where blue was the highlight colour, dotting through lupins, camassias and Phacelia tanacetifolia, often used as a green manure but leave it to flower (rather than digging it into the soil before the buds burst open) and the bees will love you, the flowers are a pretty lavender blue. Purple perennial favourites at Chelsea were in evidence around the showground from the purple stemmed and flowered Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’, the pompoms of alliums such as Allium hollandicum and ‘Purple Sensation’ along with dark velvety irises. Purple is a perfect colour to standout against a green backdrop, especially the deeper, dark shades. Whatever your favourite colour is to use or add to your garden we could all do with a little more green in our lives.