The most notable resident of Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire was Mr Charles Paget Wade, an architect, artist, poet and collector. Aged just seven, he began accumulating artefacts that reflected his interest in design, craftsmanship and colour. By the time he gave his home to the National Trust, his collection totalled 22,000 items, with Mr Wade living in a small garden cottage as a result. A rather mischievous character, he was renowned for playing tricks on guests and was described by neighbour Mrs Graham Greene as ‘half a goblin’; she ‘didn’t like the way he would laugh to himself’ in her presence.

A highlight of Claydon House in Buckinghamshire, the Chinese Room is widely considered to be the finest surviving example of Chinoiserie in Britain. Eighteenth-century travel and international trade had given rise to an obsession with Asia and inspired the popular new ritual of tea drinking. Generations of Verneys used the Chinese Room as a private sitting room, and for taking tea with visitors, including Florence Nightingale, sister of 19th-century owner Lady Verney. Florence became a regular visitor, eventually occupying several of her own rooms at Claydon where she developed her important work in nursing.

Secluded amongst trees in the grounds of George Bernard Shaw’s Hertfordshire residence is a small hut where Shaw found the tranquillity he needed to write. It was built on a circular steel track so it could revolve to follow the sun throughout the day. In this small space, surrounded by this peaceful pale green, Shaw created plots and characters that would bring him a Nobel Prize in 1925 and an OSCAR in 1938. Shaw fondly dubbed the hut ‘London’, so that unwanted visitors could be told he was away ‘visiting the capital’.

The West Sussex estate on which Standen House sits was previously three farms, bought in 1890 by James Beale, a prosperous solicitor. He commissioned architect Philip Webb and the designer William Morris to build and furnish it. A fabulous example of an Arts & Crafts House, Standen is adorned in Morris’ distinctive style: wallpaper and fabric patterns, carpets and paint colours. This deep green can be seen on the panelling of the Dining Room, a backdrop to the Beale family’s collection of blue and white porcelain.

Ellen Terry, a renowned Shakespearean actress, was immortalised as Lady Macbeth in an 1889 portrait by John Singer Sargent. In that painting she is seen in a spectacular green dress, crocheted to look like chainmail, embroidered with gold and decorated with a thousand iridescent wings from the green jewel beetle, which shed their colourful wings naturally. The dress is preserved within the Ellen Terry Museum at Smallhythe Place, the half-timbered Kent farmhouse she fell in love with and bought in 1899.

The last castle to be built in England, Castle Drogo was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens for Julius Drewe and was completed in 1930. Drewe was a wealthy entrepreneur who purchased land at Drewsteignton in Devon in the belief he was a descendant of the Norman knight, Drogo de Teigne. Sir Lutyens wanted the colours of the panelled Drawing Room, from which this is taken, to reflect ‘sky and meadow in a Cuyp picture’, although the original scheme was in fact more muted than it appears today.

A zingy, citrus white, this shade works best when partnered with stronger greens of a similar hue, or as part of a bright palette of well-lit, bold colours, in which it will sing.

Shakespeare famously used the name in his 1600 work A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for the character also known as Robin Goodfellow, but the origin of the word Puck in folklore is older still. Consistently a mischievous but inherently lonely character, a primary goal for this fabled, pixie-like forest-dweller is the simple acquisition of friends.

Declared ‘the most impressive country house in Devon’ by the architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner, Saltram House is a Jacobean mansion, completed in the 18th century for John Parker, 1st Baron Boringdon. An early Georgian makeover included two rooms styled by the most revered interior designer of the time, Robert Adam. This green from the Dining Room was, in all likelihood, chosen to match a pair of urns he designed himself to display in this room.

A natural partner for the slightly deeper version ‘Acorn’, this fresh colour sits very comfortably as a primary or secondary shade within a pale green interior, and equally well in a garden environment as an alternative to white.

Built as a Georgian Merchant’s house by the philanthropic Peckover family in 1722, Peckover House sits proudly on North Brink in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and was named in their honour when it was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1948. This elegant pale, putty-green is from the Drawing Room. It surrounds a splendid Rococo over-mantel, reputedly one of the finest of its kind from the 1750s.

After a wartime fire in 1942, the refurbishment of Melford Hall, a 16th-century Suffolk manor, was subject to the Danish influence of its then-owner Lady Ulla Hyde Parker. The result is a beautifully preserved example of old-meets-new, with 20th-century furnishings and polished concrete floors set against a backdrop of original Elizabethan architecture. Lady Ulla used this shade within a pale neutral colour scheme, even up-cycling some original, fire-damaged Chippendale furniture with a coat of paint.