‘Green Flowers: Unexpected Beauty for the Garden, Container or Vase’ by Alison Hoblyn is a book celebrating all that is best with green flowers. If you want to splash out on a second book try ‘Emeralds: 1000 Green Flowers and 500 Choice Green Foliage Plants’ by Karen Platt’. Who would have thought there were so many green flowers  to choose from.

Green flowers make a good foil for stronger colours on other plants and also generate a lot of interest in their own right. Flower arrangers love green plants and many traditional flowers like Chrysanths and Carnations have been bred for cutting but many florists flowers are died to look green so beware.

Top Ten Green Flowering Plants

1. Hemerocallis the Day Lily variety Green Flutter gets our list off to a yellowish green start as shown on the book cover.
2. Ribes laurifolium Mrs Amy Doncaster is a strong growing lime green flowering currant. It is evergreen and a strong performer that attracts bees. One of my all time favourites.
3. Alchemilla mollis or Lady’s Mantle is a free flowering easy to grow (free seeding thus harder to control) small perennial with light airy grey-green flowers.
4. Hecquetica epipactus has flowers or what look like flowers. Six green petaled “daisies” with domed yellow centres sit on the ground in tight clumps sometimes with a slight yellow colouring in part of the petal or bract.
5. Euphorbias provide many green forms and ‘E. myrinities Tulipa Spring Green’ springs to mind but see our Euphorbia page
6. Viridiflora is a name in plants that implies green as in the range of Viridiflora Tulips. There is also Rose odorata ‘Viridiflora’ that has the appearance of green flowers.



7. Gladioli Emerald Spring is the greenest of green glads without any other colour. Flowering Jul-Sep of about 20 ruffled medium-sized flowers 7 or more will open by the time the first flower fades. A flower arrangers dream and easy to grow.
8. Plant the Iris hybrid Pride of Ireland for a subtle shade of the softest green
9. Primula Francisca has lime green flowers with pale yellow eyes. Chloe and Benny Green are green forms of Auricula from the same Primula family.
10. Hellebores are often green flowered and I suggest the Helleborus ericsmithii for the long lasting interest.

By my reckoning that still leave about 990 green flowers to discover.