Top 10 Fragrant Plants

   Fragrance has been the odd trait out in a lot of recent plant-breeding, but that doesn’t mean fragrant gardens have to be a forgotten page of Grandma’s memory.

   There really are some good choices still out there if fragrance matters.

   Here’s my list of my 10 favorite fragrant plants:

   1.) Dutch hyacinths. These April-blooming bulbs put out fat spikes of purple, blue, pink, rose, white, or yellow. Most are strongly perfumed and waft readily – no brushing-against needed.

   2.) Polianthes tuberosa. Sometimes called “tuber rose,” this plant isn’t a rose at all but a tender bulb that some people consider to be the most fragrant of anything big or small. It grows only a foot or so tall and produces white flowers throughout summer. Try one in a pot.

   3.) Dwarf lilac. Most of these are just as fragrant as the bigger, older French lilacs but bloom heavier and on more compact five- to six-foot plants. ‘Miss Kim,’ ‘Tinkerbelle,’ and dwarf Korean lilacs are three of my favorites.

   4.) Korean spice viburnum. Most viburnums smell pretty good when they bloom in May, but Korean spice types have them all beat (except maybe for Judd viburnums). These six-footers also have very nice deep-maroon fall foliage.

   5.) Roses. Lots of roses have little to no scent, but lots more range from “gently sweet” to “amazingly powerful.” I like the David Austin English-rose line pretty much across the board for fragrance, but some other standouts include ‘Double Delight,’ ‘Perfume Delight,’ ‘Frederic Mistral,’ ‘Miss All-American Beauty,’ ‘Mister Lincoln,’ ‘Honey Perfume,’ ‘Memorial Day,’ and ‘Tiffany.’

   6.) Oriental lily. This type of hardy, summer-blooming lily has the sweetest, strongest fragrance of any lily type. The big, trumpet-shaped, downward-facing flowers bloom in July and August and come in a variety of colors. The old-fashioned white ‘Casablanca’ is best known and still a winner.

   Orienpet lilies (a cross of Oriental and trumpet types) also are very fragrant.

   7.) Rosemary. This fine-leafed herb grows in a little bush that’s strongly pine-scented when you rub the branches. We’re a little too cold in winter to grow it as a perennial, but it’s fragrant enough to warrant buying new each spring.

   8.) Lavender. This silvery-leafed herb is plenty winter-hardy, so long as you give it excellent drainage. It has its own distinct scent (citrusy-pine?) and blooms nicely in purple to boot.

   9.) Sweet box. This trailing, two-foot-tall broadleaf evergreen makes a nice shady groundcover. Its little white, early-spring flowers are barely visible underneath the foliage, but the sweet scent carries readily, creating the mystery, “Where is that scent coming from?”

   10.) Jasmine vine. Jasmine vine is a glossy-leafed, tropical vine whose masses of dainty white flowers are sweetly fragrant all summer. We can’t grow it year-round as a hardy vine like Southerners, but we can grow it as an annual vine and then cut it back, pot it up, and overwinter it as a houseplant.