SUSIE’S GARDEN
Warm summer evenings are the perfect opportunity for you to savour the scents and sights of your blooming garden
With the heat of summer there’s an intensity to the scents that are held in the still air of the garden. That’s especially so in an enclosed space, so a walled town garden can be the perfect place for perfumed plants.
If you have a backyard or small garden, you can fill pots with scented herbs, or grow climbers, such as heady, exotic jasmine, up its walls.
I like to be able to walk round in the evening with a cup of tea enjoying the honeysuckle, which is at its best then. Its long tubular flowers are pollinated by night-flying insects as they have longer tongues than bees. Honeysuckle grows wild in British woodlands where it scrambles up trees towards
the light. That gives a clue to its favourite garden pinks takes me growing conditions and, like immediately back to my first clematis, it likes to have cool garden. The sweetness of roots. The grey-leaded lilacs, the citrus tang of lily of honeysuckle “Graham the valley, the warmth of Thomas” is particularly good. lavender or apple-like
Another for night scent is chamomile can remind us of Nicotiana sylvestris, a tall people or places. The mock stately tobacco plant with orange, Philadelphus, has a long white trumpet flowers. It bergamot scent reminiscent needs a warm spot and is of Spanish holidays. This usually grown as a half-hardy shrub is smothered in white annual, though in the south cupped flowers which attract or in London it can bees, and it can cope with overwinter. Amazingly for my urban pollution as well as North Pennine garden, mine salt-laden air. There are survived the winter, thanks to several varieties but a deep mulch and welldrained “Virginal” is one of the best. soil. I collected a A plant that has gained mass of seed and the popularity recently is new plants are now Cosmos atrosanguineus growing in the flower which has a pretty, dark borders. burgundy flower. It does Perfumed cottage need overwintering in a garden flowers can warm greenhouse but is trigger memories worth the trouble because it and the clove of smells of chocolate!
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