Yes! I love to do this.
I just buy the ground cloves at the grocery store. When I make milk and honey soap, I always divide in half and make 1/2 into spiced milk and honey. I just use cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves right off my spice shelf. I sprinkled some whole cloves on top for decoration once, but I didn't really like that b/c the cloves were a bit stabby and I hadn't taken my soap slicer into account, so some of the bars were kind of mangled from being sliced and the whole cloves being dragged down through the bar.
I would not try to get a scrubby effect from ground spices. I feel like that might be too harsh or irritating. I would add ground oatmeal for the scrubbing effect.
I have never had the cloves turn my soap green. They just say the same dark reddish/brown color they are in the bottle. Perhaps that poster used fresh cloves?