Susie’s Garden
Our expert sings the praises of her favourite scented plants
The long, hot summer felt positively Mediterranean. We slipped into a different way of life, eating outdoors and gardening in the cool of early mornings or evenings.
Along with the heat, there have been Mediterranean type smells: dry grass and earth, oils evaporating from lavender and herbs, pungent tomato leaves and the heady scent from lilies.
Scent adds an extra dimension to the garden. It can take us back to places we’ve known. When I smell the cherry pie plant I am instantly transported back to the conservatory at Wallington Hall, a delightful National Trust garden in Northumberland.
That was where I first came across this lovely purple flower which is like a mixture of cherries and vanilla. It is usually grown as an annual and you can buy seed of bedding varieties, but the strength of scent varies so check the description.
Buddleia has a strong honey scent that makes it irresistible to butterflies, hence the common name of butterfly bush. A couple of blooms brought indoors will fill your house with perfume. It’s well known to produce masses of seed – just think of the buddleias on railway lines and waste ground – but I deadhead mine a couple of times a week which makes it flower longer.
I have four buddleias around the paved area where we sit, along with other scents from roses, catmint and
lavender. I started with just one, the variety ‘Black Knight’ and produced the other three from two-foot-long cuttings that were simply pushed into the ground and rooted!
I cut the lavender to hang in the house and keep away clothes moths. Lavender was used, along with dried petals of flowers, roses and herbs, to make scented pot pourri.
Mixed in would be leaves such as aromatic bergamot. This showy plant has tubular flowers that attract bees. I grow an intensely coloured red variety that flowers for ages.
A plant scent that I love, but which is like Marmite in dividing opinion, is clary sage. Tall pale lilac flower spikes are sticky and resinous; the plant is used to make an essential oil used in aromatherapy.