The Scentual Garden: Exploring the World of Botanical Fragrance

5

SCENT IN THE LANDSCAPE

The pleasure of the garden is how it engages each one of our five senses, and what feelings such new experiences evoke when we follow not just our eyes but also our noses to find the source of that seduction. Looking around my own landscape, I realize that I have long sited plants not just for their color, form, and function but also for their fragrance and for ways to experience it.

I’ve tried to sample as many plants as I could and to share my impressions of how their flowers or leaves smell. I admit my findings are subjective, but, when I could, I have asked friends for their thoughts and encouraged them to be specific. I’ve included some of the more textured and detailed perceptions in this book. I took notes and included the findings here. The question remains of how best to use this knowledge when designing our gardens.

I always try to place scented plants in high-traffic areas, where there are frequent opportunities to encounter them, and I have a few fragrant plants in somewhat enclosed spaces so that their scents linger. For example, Prunus laurocerasus, cherry laurel, is backed by a wall of boxwood so the movement of the air slows and the honey smell stays around.

I appreciate the idea of sensory gardens especially for those with diminished eyesight that will, perhaps, welcome fragrance most of all. Raised beds are a logical design feature, to bring plants up for noses and for the wheelchair bound. The best height for the soil surface in the raised bed is probably around twenty-four inches. Tools for challenged gardeners should have brightly colored handles and string or rawhide loops threaded through holes in handles for wrists so tools are less likely to be dropped.

A blind gardener would appreciate straight paths, but a sighted wheelchair Olympian might like a mini-maze with winding paths. Just make sure the walkways are not too narrow.

Pathways deserve special attention because they bring people close to scent. Plants like catmint and lavender and big root geranium, which release their leafy smells when disturbed, can be used to edge walks, where they will be brushed by pants legs. Rosemary lines a circular brick paved circle at the State University of New York’s gardens in Farmingdale (USDA zone 7), reaching a height of about twenty inches by the end of the growing season, when the evergreen sub-shrubs lean over the walk’s edges. Even a feather touch releases their fragrant version of what could be described as delicious edible pine. Smells can also be set free with every step upon mats of creeping thyme planted among stepping-stones.

I placed tall roselilies (double-flowered Oriental types) near the edge of a path to assure that their heavy fragrance is unavoidable to passersby during the day, especially me. Every time I walk there, I get up close and try to figure out the elements that make up the heavy aroma. I think of clove, burned sugar, green apples, vanilla, and a hint of anise. At night, the strength of the scent is doubled.

If you have a favorite smell, indulge yourself and keep it close. One vivid fragrance I can’t be without is provided by lilacs, and I’ve planted as many species and varieties as I have space and sun for. I grow about twenty “common” or “French” types of Syringa vulgaris on either side of a path where I can conveniently sample their flowers in spring, and reach stems for cutting, to fill a vase for the nightstand. These lilacs give off their dreamy perfume twenty-four hours a day-even in the dark.

One of my favorite lilacs is an early-blooming variety with lush Wedgwood-blue flowers, called ‘President Lincoln’—it’s tall and lanky like its namesake. I planted it below a second-story bedroom, where its perfume can flow in through the window. ‘President Lincoln’ has a lighter, soapier scent than the cool purple flowers of other varieties in the species Syringa vulgaris.

Images — Whenever possible, place fragrant plants in the best place for sampling. Beginning in August, the white flowers of *Hosta plantaginea* ‘Grandiflora’ plants lining a path in the Wave Hill Flower Garden fill the evening air with honeysuckle perfume.

The height of plants plays a role in how their scent is experienced. If possible, try to get fragrant flowers up to nose level. That’s why I have short blooming vines covering the six-foot-tall trellises around the three columns supporting my sun porch. I’ve also elevated some plants in tubs, so guests won’t have to bend down to notice and enjoy their aromatic flowers or leaves.

For shadier pathways, Hosta plantaginea species, varieties, and hybrids are welcome choices. The entrance path to the Flower Garden at Wave Hill is planted with H. plantaginea ‘Grandiflora’, and in late summer the large white fragrant flowers bloom day after day, evening after evening. The long, bright flaring blossoms open around four o’clock in the afternoon.

Large containers are also great for the disabled gardener as well as for decoration. I have twin Alocasia, elephant ears, in big containers by a cool shady patio that catches breezes from the nearby river. The pots flank a set of steps and announce the level change from the grill down to the outdoor table. This is the place to sit and have dinner in the evening in August. These big-leafed tropicals bloom concurrently, one flower after another sharing their fruit-candy smells. The night phlox (Zaluzianskya capensis) is an annual for pots that also offers a candy fragrance.

Bordering the main path leading from the house to the garden are a potted gardenia, a jasmine up on a plant stand, and even a night-blooming cereus placed where I can be sure not to miss its annual blossoms.

I have one container filled with an alpine strawberry that lives outside year-round, and though it barely makes enough fruit to even top a bowl of cereal, just one incredibly fragrant berry wafts the warm perfume of a dozen regular strawberries into the air. If you are in zone 7, plant corms of fruit-scented acidanthera, also called Abysinian gladiolus, (Gladiolus murielae), for their sweet and musky winged white stars with deep purple throats.

You may want to also bring more fragrant trees and shrubs closer to the house. Why locate late winter beauties such as the hybrid Asian witch hazels, Hamamelis × intermedia, off in the far corners of the garden where you are unlikely to go, especially if snow is still on the ground, when they are unfurling their ribbon-like blossoms? Then again, these shrubs should not take center stage when out of bloom. Careful planning allows the large shrubs to become background foils for bulbs and herbaceous perennials that will appear after the witch hazels’ showtime. In early spring, that might be a miniature anise-scented daffodil with pale lemon-yellow petals and a salmon-pink cup, Narcissus ‘Prototype’, followed by multi-flowered, double Narcissus ‘Daphne’, perfumed with vanilla, lily, eggnog, and wine.

On the open porch, one flight of stairs above the garden, it is nice to have a bit of fragrance waft upward. That’s not hard with the tall shrubs and small trees planted below. The multi-stemmed redbud crabapple, Malus × zumi var. calocarpa, opens fragrant white flowers in midspring. Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ blooms in midsummer. The fragrance on the porch has just the right amount of honey in spring and honey with sweet meadow grass in summer.

How far a particular plant casts its fragrant spell is another factor I weigh. More potent plants release their molecules in abundance and bathe the atmosphere in distinctive aromas. Scent-rich plants may best be positioned where they are not competing with—or overpowering—any adjacent aromatic companions. Plants, like the summer phlox, that push their smells onto the breeze and bathe the air from a distance might best be grown farther away, in the background.

Daylilies, which have subtle smells in need of close-up sampling, can be planted next to a path or seating area. They grow toward the brightest sunlight, so plant them on the darker side and the flower spikes will lean toward passersby. I’ve planted a couple of varieties that bloom on the last days of summer, to stretch the daylily season to its limits: Hemerocallis multiflorus ‘August Orange’ flowers very late and ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ blooms until the beginning of October. Some varieties also rebloom for a second, late-season sampling.

Think about the season and even the time of day you visit or use a particular area of the garden. If the patio is a spot where you lounge on summer evenings, night-blooming jasmine, Cestrum nocturnum, may be something to enjoy. Then again, its fragrance may be too much if it is near a spot for late dining. Cestrum nocturnum, which is not a jasmine but in the nightshade family, is intense: I witnessed a guest at an outdoor dinner party have a bad reaction just to the potent airborne molecules, but I’ve also read of those nearby getting delightfully slap-happy in its presence. Arabian jasmine, Jasminum sambac, would be safer. You have to get up close to sample the smell. You might even want to put three blossoms in a shallow bowl of water as a centerpiece everyone can pick up and sniff, again and again. How about placing creased makrut or K-lime leaves in finger bowls?

Many of the most fragrant flowers bloom at night, and the gardener ought to plan for that. The “vesper flowers,” the renowned garden writer Louise Beebe Wilder wrote in 1932, “hold their sweetness from the day and give it freely to the night.” Wilder called the night-bloomers “rather a curious company,” saying that “few have any daytime attractions.” And then night begins to fall, and “with twilight comes an extraordinary change. As if touched by a magic wand they lift their heads and become lovely, flooding the night breezes with a message of irresistible sweetness to the night-moths.”

For evening walkers, there are oxymoronic daylilies, for example lemony Hemerocallis citrina and H. ‘Yao Ming’, flowers that open at dusk in July. The flaring flowers usually remain open through the next morning.

The tender perennial Mirabilis jalapa says it all with its common name, four-o’clocks. These flowers do begin to open and release their honeysuckle scent at that hour. Consider having a big pot of four-o’clocks near an outdoor entertaining area so that guests can be enthralled by a visiting sphinx moth, flying hummingbird-style and sipping nectar, in the light of candles or the moon.

Mirabilis form fat tubers that can be dug and stored as you might dahlias, in an attempt to carry them over until the next spring. Some have dark magenta flowers, others are striped, splashed, and speckled in multiple colors, and each is different. One is pure white, and another, ‘Limelight’, has gold leaves with contrasting cerise flowers.

Most people don’t check out their humble petunias in hanging baskets or kneel down to meet and greet them as bedding plants. You could discover that these flowers often offer a potent scent of powder and clove as the sun creeps toward the horizon. That said, whether you stand on your toes or bow down, you might also find that many hybrids disappoint. It is another case of a fragile gene being lost (or found) in hopes of breeding something new.

Hybrid petunias are bred from two Argentinian species: P. axilaris with large fragrant night-blooming white flowers and the unscented ever-blooming P. integrifolia with small violet blossoms. Several are noted for their scent. Mauve ‘Plum Crazy’ is fragrant, as are deep purple ‘Dreams Midnight’, and amazingly, yellow ‘Prism Sunshine’. ‘Evening Scentsation’ is a recent hybrid in the United States and the new Thumbelina Mixed Perfume Collection of double flowers is offered in Britain.

Author and plant breeder Joseph Tychonievich says some hybridizers are considering scent and includes ‘Rainmaster’, a selection of the species P. axillaris, and ‘Old Fashioned Climbing’ as successful introductions. He adds that buying fragrant petunias might be hard. It’s tough to sell a highly scented plant after the garden center is closed.

Petunia is in the nightshade family, Solanaceae, along with many other plants that smell only at night. Nicotiana (flowering tobacco) releases its aroma in the evening. The potato vine, Solanum jasminoides, fills the air with a thick perfume around dusk. Plants like these, scattered through the garden, can make a stroll as the light fades unforgettable.

As you travel through public and private gardens and your own, create a record of the scents that you enjoy. Many of us have kept garden journals in lovely bound notebooks or have just scribbled on a pad of paper. Today, we draw up lists on our phones and in our computers. At the very least, keep your receipts to note what you bought and when. Add scent to the qualities you jot down when you want to remember a plant. If you take a photo, try to include something about the plant’s smell in the file name, along with the genus and species. In the dead of winter, a fragrance description is a great reminder of a scent from summer.

And then share your knowledge. I’ve always known that sharing the story of a plant—and every plant has a story—helps non-gardeners realize that all living things are unique individuals. When you introduce a fragrance you’ve discovered to a friend, he or she will think of the plant and the scent differently thereafter.

The pleasure of the garden is how it engages each one of our five senses, and what the feelings of new experiences evoke. I hope I have ignited an interest in how much more enjoyment there is in meeting nearly every plant. This is an unusual book that has taken on describing botanical fragrance in detail, the scents of flowers and the smell of leaves, stems, twigs, even a couple of roots.

One of my goals is to turn people on, and I want you to participate in the mission of helping others appreciate what gardeners recognize. Most people take plants for granted, but no living thing would be alive without them. Lucky us—they are beautiful, and more.

If you can touch just one person, help someone recognize the importance of botanical living things, that will be worth all of our efforts. Another goal is to transport you, the reader, to a stimulating place of rich diversity. Ellen has helped us see plants more deeply, and my photographs show you new ways to get the most out of the plants that share our gardens. You met botanical individuals that could fill your garden, those that have the most appealing fragrances. I hope I’ve shown how much more enjoyment there can be in meeting nearly every plant with our sensitivities fully engaged.

Imagine lying in a hammock being bathed in delicious smells, perhaps from a tropical Hedychium. You would be experiencing their perfumes, and if you are like me, swooning as the cares of the day melt away—even just for a moment. You cannot be sampling a plant and be doing anything else. I’m glad I could test and analyze the various aromas in the garden and bring this new depth of understanding and enjoyment to more and more people.

Now you know what I know. There is so much more to every garden than green, or even colors. There is a natural abundance out there to experience, and endless opportunities for aromatic indulgence.