HEAVEN SCENT
Follow your nose and stock your garden with plants that will stimulate your senses
One of the joys of gardening is taking time to enjoy the fruits of your labour. This might be sitting down with a cuppa and just enjoying the outdoor picture you have created. Or it could be wandering around, observing plant life up close, enjoying its beauty and watching butterflies flitting about and bees burrowing for nectar.
Or you might be a sniffer, taking enormous pleasure inhaling deeply the perfumes, getting high on roses!
Scent often takes a second place in garden design as initially we try to get things looking the way we want them and it’s only afterwards that we think about introducing fragrance.
Research has found that smell links to the emotional regions of our brains more directly than any of the other senses and we are all familiar with the power of scent to trigger memories as far back as our childhoods. At the back of my house I have a verandah, a second floor covered deck which you reach by means of a spiral staircase.
I decided to plant the stairs so that greenery would clamber up and reach the second floor, bringing the garden closer to the house.
I used Star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) which, once settled in its planting hole last autumn, started its climb upwards this spring.
What’s surprised me over the past month or so is the scent that envelops me as I run up or down.
Star jasmine has small white flowers but they make their presence known with the sweetest smell!
The wisteria that drips from the upper balcony smells absolutely wonderful as well but its season is so brief I will need to supplement it with another climber – perhaps a honeysuckle such as ‘Graham Thomas’ with its creamy white flowers that become more fragrant by night.
In late spring and early summer there are any number of shrubs that will delight.
Lilac flowers will evoke nostalgia in many as you don’t see them planted as much nowadays, which is a shame. That’s probably because of their bland foliage and the way the flowers go brown after flowering, but you can always deadhead these and perhaps position the plant at the back of the border and allow other plants to take the focus after they’ve put on their show.
Philadelphus ‘Belle Etoile’ is one of the most fragrant of the mock oranges and if you’ve got acid soil you can include rhododendrons for a heavenly scent.
Roses rule the roost in summer and my choice for best perfume are ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, the classic pink English rose, and
‘Munstead Wood’ for a fruity fragrance.
Adorn your walls with the scented climbing rose Madame Alfred Carriere and include some Rosa rugosa ‘Roseraie de l’hay’ in your boundaries.
Top choice for pots are lilies, dianthus and wallflowers, and plant some phlox in the borders.
All members of the mint family – usually recognisable by having a square stem – have aromatic foliage and include lavender, perovskia, rosemary, salvias, thyme, nepeta and of course mint itself. And on balmy summer nights treat yourself to some Nicotiana sylvestris in pots on the patio and nightstock outside on your bedroom windowsill.
For winter scent I’d recommend Viburnum farreri, a medium sized deciduous shrub. It might look ordinary but as you pass by its unmistakable perfume will make you inhale deeply.
Witchhazels combine unusual and beautiful flowers with a delicious fragrance, and Christmas Box (Sarcococca confusa) will surprise – hiding among the evergreen foliage are these quite ordinary small white flowers with the most delicious sweet fragrance.
Good positions for fragrant plants are near the house, along pathways and near entrances, so they create memories for you and your visitors.
All members of the mint family have aromatic foliage, such as lavender