Fragrant Plants

August 15th, 2002

   Watch people walk through a summer flower garden, and nine times out of 10 they’re not in there a minute before you see them sniffing a bloom.

   Also about nine times out of 10, the sniffs aren’t worth the effort.

   “People see a pretty flower and kind of expect that it’ll smell good,” says Barbara Whitcraft, director of horticulture at Hershey Gardens. “But it seems that pretty often, today’s flowers have very little, if any, fragrance.”

   One reason so many plants don’t deliver nasally is because they’re hybrids, bred for such improvements as longer bloom time, new colors, compact sizes, pest and disease resistance and better cold hardiness.

   It’s rare to find a winner in every trait, so when it comes to picking something to take a back seat, fragrance often is the odd trait out.

   Also a factor is that flowers don’t smell good for our benefit. Scents are primarily to attract insects to do the pollinating that the plants need to procreate themselves.

   But plants that depend on greenhouse growers to propagate them rather than insects have no need for fragrance.

   That doesn’t mean fragrant gardens are only a thing of Grandma’s memory. There are some really good choices still out there if fragrance matters.

   Some, like old-fashioned flowering tobacco (Nicotiana sylvestris), mock oranges and heirloom perennials such as dianthus and violets, spew wonderful scents all over the yard with no prompting.

   Others, like scented geraniums and rosemary, have more subtle scents that require you to brush against them or to bend over and take a sniff.

   Before you go too hog-wild down the scented route, make sure you actually like the fragrances of the plants you’re considering. Being fragrant doesn’t mean it’s a fragrance that’ll appeal to your nasal system.

   Some people, for instance, love the sweet scent of paperwhite bulbs wafting through the house in winter. Others think they smell like burning rubber.

   Point: Beauty is in the nose of the beholder.

   If you can’t get a whiff of a plant at the time you’re buying, do some “homework-sniffing” ahead of time in neighbors’ yards or at public gardens. Then make note of the species and particular variety because sometimes one variety of, say, honeysuckle, will smell great but another variety will have no scent.

   When you find scented plants that appeal to you, resist the seemingly logical urge to pack them all together in one “fragrance garden” — especially if most of the plants are going to bloom at the same time.

   All of these odors may blend together in one unrecognizable mess, kind of like a cake with six or eight too many ingredients.

   A much better way to scent a yard is to scatter both the placement of the fragrant plants and their bloom times. This way you’ll have little fragrant surprises all over, from early spring until winter freezes everything out.

   Place your “smelly-goods” along walkways, near door entrances, around patios and benches and next to windows where a breeze will carry favorite plant scents into the house on warm evenings.

   Your fragrance show can begin as early as mid to late March when witch hazels start blooming. Look for a variety called ‘Arnold Promise,’ which is showy and durable as well as fragrant.

   Soon after, daffodils and hyacinths will start opening. These are two of the most fragrant types of spring bulbs, especially the Jonquilla, Poeticus and Tazetta types of daffs. ‘Blue Jacket’ and the white-flowered ‘Carnegie’ are two of the most fragrant hyacinth varieties.

   Another fragrant small tree that blooms around this same time is the star magnolia, which has mildly fragrant white flowers in years when a late frost doesn’t get them.

   As the daffs and hyacinths wind down in April, it’s prime time for two of the most fragrant of all shrubs — the Korean spice viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) and the Judd viburnum (Viburnum judii). These both have spicy scents that fill half the yard when their snow-ball-like flowers open. Both are great low-pest landscaping plants, too.

   May is almost a no-brainer month for fragrance. Lilacs, peonies and daphne are the stars in early and mid May, and they lead into the sweet blooms of mock orange, sweetbay magnolia and cold-hardy, compact Southern magnolias such as ‘Edith Bogue’ and ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty.’

   Also toward the end of May is the more subtle scent of many varieties of bearded iris.

   June is peak month for rose blooms, and there are tons of great fragrant choices there. Some of the best are ‘Double Delight,’ ‘Perfume Delight,’ ‘Frederic Mistral,’ ‘Miss All-American Beauty,’ ‘Voodoo,’ ‘Moon Shadow’ and ‘Tiffany.’

   Throughout the summer, you can rely on annual flowers or a mix of summer-blooming perennials to scent the garden.

   Flowering tobacco (Nicotiana) and the vanilla-scented heliotrope are two of the most fragrant annuals, while lilies (especially the white-blooming ‘Casablanca’ variety) are some of the best fragrant summer perennials.

   Whitcraft says white-flowered annuals and perennials often are more fragrant than other colors.

   Some hosta smell pretty good, too, such as the ‘Fragrant Bouquet’ variety or the species Hosta plantaginea. Also consider lavender, which has a distinct scent to both its foliage and flowers AND is tough in a drought as well.

   The going gets a little tougher as summer fades into fall. Not a lot blooms late in the season, although you might get a rebloom from the roses and hang onto the annuals if frost holds off.

   One plant worth trying for this time of year is a tender bulb that some people consider to be the most fragrant of anything — Polianthes tuberosa, often called “tuberose.” If you don’t mind having to dig it, store it and replant it each year, the fragrance is worth the work and wait.

   Also nice in late summer is anise hyssop (Agastache), which puts out licorice-scented flower spikes. (‘Blue Fortune’ is a great long-blooming variety.)

   Scented geraniums also are tough enough to hang around through a first frost or two. These come in a variety of scents that are best appreciated when rubbing leaves between your fingers.

   Don’t overlook other plants with scented foliage. Lemon balm and lemon thyme have a nice citrusy scent all season, santolina and rosemary have strong “piney” scents, and evergreens such as cedar, cypress and firs have woodsy fragrances that continue long after all of our flowers are done for the season.

   Now that more gardeners seem to be interested in fragrance again, look for breeders and growers to come up with new introductions, says Whitcraft.

   And if they don’t, you can always do what one enterprising gardener suggested in “Garden Gate” magazine — buy a little cheap cologne and spray it on your plant stems. A sniffing garden visitor will never know the difference! 

   Some other plants with nice fragrance:

* Trees/Shrubs

Abelia

Apple, crabapple

Azalea (some)

Crape myrtle

Flowering cherry

Fringetree (Chionanthus)

Honeysuckle (some)

Japanese snowbell (Styrax japonica)

Mountain ash

Rhododendron (some)

Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia)

Sweetshrub (Calycanthus)

Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica)

Wisteria

 * Perennials

Carnations

Daylilies (some)

Evening primrose

Lily-of-the-valley

Mints

Oregano

Phlox (some)

Sweet woodruff

Tulips (some) 

* Annuals

Alyssum

Four-o’clocks

Petunias (some)

Stock (Matthiola)

Sweet peas