Fifty Shades of Green

Written By Deborah Soltis

I have a weakness for gardens. All of them.

I think of them as a kind of symphony. While my friends might get dressed up for a night at the theater, I can sit in my backyard with a glass of wine and watch my own performance unfold.

It started when I was a little girl in San Diego, walking to school with my older brother. We had a favorite detour through a hidden oasis tucked into an ordinary neighborhood. Surrounded by green… that tropical jungle seemed magical.

There are the background musicians—the layers of green. Plants and trees of different shapes, sizes and textures, woven together in every imaginable shade. Chartreuse creeping Jenny spilling across the ground. Broad hosta leaves in shades of green. The feathery texture of a fern. A sturdy tree rising above it all, its leafy canopy seemingly strong enough to withstand anything—except perhaps the vine determined to climb its trunk.

And then there are the soloists.

A burst of color here. Another there.

This photograph is our Pennsylvania woodland garden, viewed from the patio outside our kitchen. 

The rhododendron is often one of the background musicians, quietly filling out the garden with its green foliage for most of the year.

But every spring, she gets her moment.

The curtain rises, and the soloist dazzles the audience with clouds of brilliant magenta blooms.

The bulbs also have their turn on stage. Then the peonies. And at some point, the flowering cherry steals the show, scattering soft pink petals across the lawn like snow.

And then summer arrives.

The brilliant red roses take the stage, followed by dusty blue, purple and pink hydrangeas dancing throughout the garden. 

Phlox and delphiniums join in.

One beautiful performance after another.

And yet, none of those soloists could shine without the orchestra behind them.

The green.

It creates the depth. It fills the spaces between the stars. It gives all that color somewhere to shine.

And there isn't just one shade of green.

There are fifty.

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