SCENT-sational Garden

Savor a SCENT-sational Garden with Fragrant Plants

What’s your favorite garden memory? Is it burying your nose in sweet lavender lilacs, sneaking a sip of nectar from fragrant honeysuckle as a child, snipping spicy roses for a bouquet, or harvesting piney rosemary for recipes? Whatever your memories evoke, they’re sure to be tied to scent. After all, smell, emotion, and memories are closely linked, due to the brain’s anatomy. And while choosing plants based on color scheme or texture may be at the forefront of your mind when plant shopping, selecting deliciously fragrant plants adds a whole new dimension to your garden design.

When selecting plants for a fragrance garden, you’ll find spectacularly scented shrubs, perennials, bulbs, annuals, and – of course – herbs. Today we’ll explore a few scented shrubs to consider.

Before you begin shopping, take a moment to plan your garden, choosing fragrant plants that bloom at different times throughout the year for a succession of scent through the seasons. You’ll enjoy sweet scents all season long with a little planning. Your local garden center professional is eager to help you select the best plant for your landscape.

Sweetbush

A southeastern native that ranges from New York to Florida and west to the Mississippi River region, sweetshrub – also known as Carolina allspice – is a gardener’s dream.

The fragrant blooms smell like citrus, banana, strawberry, pineapple, bubblegum, or even gin, depending on whom you ask, plus the shrub grows beautifully whether planted in full sun or deep shade. Native plant lovers will adore Green Thumb Awardwinner Sweetshrub Simply Scentsational®, a cultivar hardy in zones 4-9. Deep maroon blooms appear in spring throughout summer, smelling like pineapple or bubblegum. ‘Venus’ produces large shows of clear white, magnolia-like blooms with a banana fragrance in early summer.

An extremely fragrant North American native deciduous shrub for zones 4-7, mockorange produces huge shows of springtime flowers with the scent of orange blossoms. Traditionally used as a specimen plant or a hedge in the landscape, new cultivars offer a variety of sizes. Illuminati Tower® grows in a columnar habit with a unique 4-sided “tower” effect, producing hundreds of fragrant white flowers in early summer. Reaching only 3 to 4 feet tall and 1.5-feet wide, it’s ideal for narrow spaces. Compact ‘Snow Dwarf’ grows only 2 to 3 feet tall and produces pure white, double flowers with fabulous orange-blossom fragrance, perfect for small gardens.

Above: Sweetshrub Simply Scentsational Below: Viburnum Sweet Talker Above: Lilac Virtual Violet Below: Mockorange

Mockorange

Viburnum

Beautiful blooms, fabulous fragrance, multi-season interest, and food for wildlife—what’s not to love about viburnum?

With so many varieties available, you’re sure to find the perfect fragrant viburnum for your garden. Sweet Talker® produces hundreds of pink, trumpet-shaped flowers with a spicy, honey scent in late winter/early spring. The plant provides good extended seasonal interest, with the leathery evergreen leaves turning purpleburgundy in fall. With its upright, vigorous growth reaching up to 7 feet tall, ‘Spice Girl’ Koreanspice viburnum makes a gorgeous hedge or specimen plant, with its spicysweet pink blooms in mid-spring and bright-red autumn foliage. Or, if space is an issue, choose ‘Baby Spice’, a compact form of its big sister.

Lilac

Many gardeners fondly remember fragrant lilac hedges from grandparents’ gardens.

Until recently, only gardeners living in colder zones could recreate those sweet memories. Fortunately, breeders took pity on southern gardeners, creating lilac cultivars that perform beautifully even in warmer climates, such as ‘Josee’, a small, reblooming lilac with the widest hardiness range, growing well in zones 3-9. Plus, while lilacs often battle powdery mildew, newer varieties offer good disease resistance. Compact, mildew-resistant New Age™ Lavender Syringa makes a perfect low-maintenance addition to small gardens. Today’s lilacs also come in a wide range of colors: red, pink, blue, yellow, cream, white, and even picotee. For a compact, reblooming pink variety, try Bloomerang™ Dwarf Pink Lilac. It grows only 2 to 3 feet tall and wide, blooms profusely in spring, and then continues to produce fragrant pink blooms throughout summer.

Article courtesy of National Garden Bureau, ngb.org.