Green is my favorite color this year. I’m actually a “blue” person, but various shades of green are dominating my desires and landscapes at this time. I’ll still veer toward blues when it comes to paint, fabrics and especially new clothes, but big, bold, stark, Nature’s Own GREEN takes center stage not only in our back yard but in our heart of hearts.

It came about this way.

I inherited a back yard planned and planted by a master gardener. She spent years studying and executing perfect curvilinear borders. Left and right sides of the greensward were expanded to balance perfectly: exact same footage on either side of the green lawn, with a central focus of massive hosta at the base of the yard. The shrubs balanced, the perennials matched, it was a harmonious picture.

Then I arrived. Attempting to replicate a true English garden, I overplanted hardy growers such as yarrow, Shasta daisies, summer stock, sedum. And last year I succumbed to the ease of the newly-developed Wave petunias. If there was a bare patch of earth, I determined it should not lay fallow too long. With trowel and determination, I filled every corner of these empty, waiting beds.

The nursery tags said “Plant 12 inches apart.” Did I heed them? Indeed not! I wanted instant fullness, instant color. Gertrude Jekyll, the great English landscape artist, would have loved the jumble that was my last year’s backyard. The borders became so full that it was almost hazardous to try and enter them. They were dense with tangles of leggy stems and vines of the Wave. Oh, my, those Wave petunias do really spread. And again, I had thought that if one was a good number, two...or three...even better. They flourished.

By the end of last summer I was nearly colorblind with my proliferation of blossoms. And truthfully, I was exhausted by trying to maintain the boundaries I had tried to establish within the borders. When fall came, I was happy to clean out the garden and see bare earth once again. A vague idea began creeping into my brain.

The Vague Idea developed into a concrete desire once warm weather approached. With the able assistance of a professional gardener who was competent not only on paper but in providing the manpower for a transformation, my back yard took on an entire new look.

Gone were the leggy cascades of perennials too old to perform. Chopped low were bushes that should have been pruned years ago. Mature plants were moved to locations where they would bloom in profusion. We kept the lovely curving lines of the borders but underscored them with low-lying emerald green Rosemary and Veronica.

An inviting brick path winds through the garden, around a weeping cherry tree and a miniature drinking shell for the birds. Happily, everything lives! My summer stock loves its relocation around the new tree and the Shasta daisies complement the summer hydrangea perfectly.

I look out every day and marvel at the symphony of greens: Paris green, emerald, celadon, olive. Punctuations of white impatiens make the greens even greener. The entire transformation is more appealing, less cluttered, more soothing than any garden I’ve ever enjoyed. If I want color, I’ll get pots of the geraniums I love, but they’ll be portable so I can switch them around when the fancy strikes.

I’m not the only one who is pleased by this year’s backyard. An army of chipmunks, rabbits, cardinals and squirrels have taken up residence with us. And just the other day I saw a strictly-ornamental birdhouse swaying in the breeze. Upon investigation, I met the newest members of our family: four baby wrens.

All of which says to me, Green is here to stay.

Barbara Dickinson is a Roanoke-based novelist and freelance writer.

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