Hedgerow Chartreuse

I have Michelle Obama to thank for chartreuse. I don’t recall ever knowing that it existed as a colour until I watched the 2009 inauguration and heard the pundits describe Michelle Obama’s coat and dress as felted wool lace in chartreuse. At the time, the texture of the outfit passed me by but I loved the colour immediately. Poised somewhere between yellow and green, it defined the new First Lady as a dynamic image of political hope and freshness. That said, it has taken me years of meandering beside hedgerows to notice that Michelle Obama wore the colour of new hazel catkins, which is why she made me think of a British spring on a chilly January day in Washington D.C.

Colour is a lovely thing to use with students, not least because colours come with stories. Chartreuse in French means ‘charterhouse’ after the Carthusian monks who first produced a vivid green-yellow liqueur, made from a concoction of 130 herbs, flowers and plants, in 1737. This liqueur was supposedly inspired by a recipe given to the monks in 1605 by one of King Henri IV’s soldiers as an elixir for long life. The colour and flavour of chartreuse made it so successful that a chartreuse based dessert was on the Titanic’s First Class menu on the 14th April 1912.

There are so many possibilities for creative work in just these few details. Students can role-play the meeting between the French king’s artillery commander and the monks of the charterhouse. They can write the original (and secret) recipe handed to the monks and then tell the story of the chef who worked on the desserts somewhere deep inside the Titanic on that cold April evening. Would he have felt the deep thud and the wrenching of metal as the ship struck the iceberg? Would he have continued to garnish the desserts as urgent feet began to pound the ship’s corridors above his head?

Then there is the April-May starter activity that I call ‘All the Greens’. Starting with any green that comes to mind, students have to name as many greens as they can see by looking out of the window. Depending on the whereabouts of the classroom, this might mean exploring the school site or setting a homework walk so that students have time to find a green place somewhere in their world. From these observations, you might get sludgy-field green, or new-leaf green; emerald often turns up, as does apple-green. Someone might spot lime, avocado or olive, and pistachio might come as a sophisticated surprise. Pear green races ahead to autumn and gooseberry can confuse those who have never met the prickly little fruits. Sea-green begins a furious debate over ocean colours, while thyme and sage might need matching herb images from Google. Mint gets the class to ice-cream with chocolate chips, forest green takes students to the Amazon, and soldier-green to a range of uniforms and wars. Hunter green leads the class to wellies and fishermen’s waders; pea green is Friday’s fish and chips, and then a student will close the lesson by waving a neon highlighter in electric green.