Green flowers are always tempting, and as cut flowers they’re especially valuable as they go so well with so many other colours. Until recently, white carnations were often dyed green – never very satisfactory – but now here’s a natural solution.
Green Trick (‘Temarisou’) is not a carnation, in fact it’s a Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus), but as you can see from the picture (click to enlarge) each flower develops into a 2in/5cm wide fuzzy ball of delicately and repeatedly dissected green petals. Flowers are unusually long lived in a vase, lasting at least four weeks. This is not raised from seed, unlike most Sweet Williams it’s propagated vegetatively, by tissue culture, so every plant is identical.
You may have seen this unique new flower in florists or supermarkets this year and it was also a finalist in the Plant of The Year competition at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Thompson & Morgan’s Paul Hansord described it for the RHS experts who voted on the award.
“Green Trick was bred in Japan for the cut flower market,” he said. “It’s sterile, so as a cut flower it lasts for a long long time and in the garden we’ve been amazed… We grew it in a container and we didn’t stake it; it’s normally 24in/60cm tall and it falls over and you get these green puffs of flowers that just fill in; if you put other colours with it looks superb in a patio pot. So you can grow it as a cut flower or you can use it in a patio pot.”
Source: My Garden – The Royal Horticultural Society – Dianthus Green Trick: New from Thompson & Morgan
