Give me green

Well I have definitely decided that I love shrubbery style gardening. Big blowsy green shrubs which spill over wide paths or nearly occlude narrow ones. Shrubs that hide the path ahead so that one finds unexpected things around the corner. Shrubs which stay green all year round and don’t need much care apart from a kind word or two in passing and a chuck under the chin from time to tome.  I love my garden to feel full, replete, overflowing. Of course I don’t have to choose between shrubs or perennials or annuals for that matter because my garden is quite big enough for them all but if I did have to choose I would choose shrubs any day. I wonder when and how that came about. I used to favour show off plants which did a big bang of colour in spring and maybe again in autumn and then disappeared through winter to come up again to delight my overwintered heart. Is it because I am getting weary as I get older? Is it that I feel I need plants around me that don’t need mummying? Is it just that I needed a change? Will I change my mind again? Who knows. What I do know is that this year I have whipped out my beautiful everlasting daisies, Xerochrysum viscosum (somehow I was exhausted by their bedraggled visage at the end of a very hot summer with very little water) and replaced them with a fulsome green leaved Callistemon ‘Rowena’, so fast growing I know I wont need to wait long to have the space filled to overflowing. The Xerochrysum will of course be re-placed around the corner in the orchard so I can enjoy their bright faces next summer but where I look out of my kitchen window every day several times a day I want it to be green, verdantly green, bouncingly green, evergreen, to keep me happy.