A successful garden is not just a matter of good design, careful choice of colours and regular care. Vital though these factors are, it is those extra ‘finishing touches’ that can transform your garden into an enchanting, memorable place. So, whatever your style of gardening, always try to include some plants that will add fragrance to the pleasures of your garden.
You will achieve the most intense fragrance if you grow plants in a warm, sheltered position. Honeysuckles and lilies will have a more intoxicating scent within an arbour or sheltered patio than if they are isolated and exposed to winds. Warm, still air will also enable you to enjoy those delicate scents that you might otherwise miss.
Position fragrant plants where they will be most appreciated. Close by a front door where they will welcome visitors.
Planted below a window, the scent of tobacco plants or night-scented stocks will waft indoors on warm summer evenings. The following suggestions are just a few of the plants that can make your garden fragrant all year round.
Winter delights
If you have space for a couple of large shrubs, include a witch-hazel (Hamamelis mollis), because its spidery yellow flowers are beautiful and wonderfully sweet-scented. Winter sweet (Chimonanthus fragrans) also has superbly scented, yellow flowers on bare branches. This plant benefits from the protection of a wall.
One of the very best plants for winter fragrance is a small, compact evergreen which will fit into almost any garden. You will probably smell the small whitish flower of Christmas box (Sarcococca humilis) before you notice them. This modest plant, often reaching no more than 1 m (3 ft) in height, is the honeysuckle of winter.
For a small garden consider some of the scented viburnums. V. or X. bodnantense and its varieties which have clusters of pink or white flowers, while the white flowers of V. farreri are smaller but even more deliciously scented. The large sprays of lemon-yellow flowers of Mahonia ‘Charity’ are striking, even from a distance, and delightfully fragrant too.
Spring charmers
The scented shrubs of spring are usually ornamental and there are example to suit gardens both large and small. Many rhododendrons and azaleas are fragrant but others lack scent, so always check before you buy. Lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) are outstanding for their perfume, but can become rather tall and straggly unless carefully pruned.
Daphnes are compact enough for most gardens, as bushes seldom grow more than 90 cm (3 ft) tall. The mezereon (D. mezereum) is one of the easier species to grow and a particular favourite for spanning the gap between mid-winter and early spring when its purple-red flowers are freely produced.
Many spring-flowering viburnums are fragrant, among them the deciduous Viburnum. carlesii and V. juddii, and the evergreen V. x burkwoodii. For something a little different, try the yellow flowering currant Ribes odoratum (syn. R. aureum).
Few spring flowers can surpass lily-of-the-valley. Shade loving, it prefers a moist soil. Another dainty, shade-tolerant plant for spring is the sweet violet, Viola odorata, which can be found in flower from winter to the end of spring.
Do not overlook seed-raised plants. The scent of familiar biennial wallflower is surprisingly strong, especially when in a massed display.
Summer scents
Among the woody plants, pride of place has to go to roses and honeysuckles. However, choose them with care; while some are outstanding, others lack scent altogether. Among the honeysuckles all varieties of Lonicera periclymenum will please.
Sweet peas are popular summer flowers with an unmistakable scent – again, some varieties are better than others. Scented summer bedding has long included old-fashioned mignonettes, night-scented stocks and ornamental tobacco plants.
Dianthus has much to offer in the way of scent, for this genus contains the pinks, border carnations and sweet williams, many of which are scented. Preferring a more moist soil than dianthus are the border phlox, Phlox paniculata and its many varieties. It flowers from midsummer to autumn when its perfume is especially welcome.
There are many plants with aromatic foliage. Lavender and lemon verbena comes immediately to mind, as do many herbs: thyme, rosemary, sage, basil, mint. Different mints have different smells; peppermint is familiar, but there is also spearmint, and apple mint.
Like the mints, the aromas of scented-leaved pelargoniums also vary. These may have less showy flowers than their bedding cousins but their foliage can smell variously of lemon, rose, apple and pine, and is often crinkled, cut and variegated.
Autumn days
Some of the fragrant plants of summer will continue into autumn for a few weeks, or even a month or two in the case of some roses. However, as the days get shorter, so the scented flowers become smaller and more insignificant than those of high summer.
Of the foliage shrubs the variegated Elaegnus pungens ‘Maculata’ and E x ebbingei ‘Gold Edge’ are easy to grow and bright to look at. Fragrant small white flowers appear on mature plants.
Vigorous and sometimes evergreen, Abelia x grandiflora has pinkish-white flowers from late summer through to November in favourable years, although it lacks the strong fragrance of many summer shrubs. Common myrtle (Myrtus communis), with a similar flowering season, is one of several shrubs with aromatic evergreen foliage which come into their own in the autumn. Others include rosemary, cotton lavender (Santolina chamaecyparissus) and Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternata).
