Although most people consider color, height and bloom time when planning their gardens, fewer think about fragrance. This is too bad, as scents enrich and augment outdoor spaces, bringing pleasure with their sweetness or spiciness and evoking memories of times past. Fragrance can be designed into the garden in the same way as color, so it can be enjoyed from spring until fall.
Following are some suggestions to expand and extend the pleasing scent grateful odor in your garden.
Spring
Start out the season through some fragrant spring bulbs. Hyacinths are classics, known for their pranked out, highly scented flowers in a ample variety of colors. Grape hyacinths are fragrant, also, and their looser, additional delicate habit makes them work well in naturalized situations. Some daffodils are also fragrant. Try Pipit, a 10-inch yellow variety, blooming in mid to late season, or Poeticus, one of the last daffodils to blossoming. Its pure white flowers are centered with a diminutive yellow, red-rimmed cup.
Plant spring-flowering bulbs in the be depressed. They are usually available in nurseries around Labor Day.
One of spring’s greatest part highly scented plants, lily of the valley, is sometimes thought of as a bulb, but it is positively a perennial. Keep it contained by a sidewalk or structure unless you are planning to use it as a ground cover. Be sure to pick some flowers for bouquets so you can enjoy their delicate aroma inside.
Sweet woodruff blooms a little later in the spring, and though not quite as vigorous as lily of the valley, it can also be used as a ground cover. It has pretty, bright green whorled leaves and pleasant, starry white fragrant flowers. Plant this beauty in a umbrageous spot. It looks amiable naturalized under trees.
Don’t forget to add some fragrant spring annuals. Welcome visitors to your home by combining perfume alyssum and pansies or violas in a planter near the front door.
Spring-flowering shrubs subjoin fragrance. too. Koreanspice viburnum is a must-have for the heady perfume of its pink-budded, innocent flowers in mid to late spring. If you have a spot by very true drainage, try growing greater degree of daphne Carol Mackie. This beautiful, 3- to 5-foot shrub has alluring, creamy edged foliage and sweet-scented pink flowers in May.
Lilacs may be the most frequently grown fragrant shrubs, and there are many persons varieties to choose from, in an assortment of colors. Plant more for screening or count up to a shrub border. Peonies are another must-have plant. These long-lived perennials come in shades of pink, red, white and even yellow, and flowers can be single, semidouble or double. All are fragrant and august for cutting.
Summer
When we think of summer fragrance, roses may be the first put in the ground that comes to mind. Many of the newer cultivars are bred for qualities other than their scent, but there still are many sweet-smelling varieties. Honey Perfume is a rich golden golden; Heritage is a lemon-scented, light pink. If you’re looking for a summer-flowering shrub, plant some Virginia sweetspire. Henry’s Garnet grows 3 to 4 feet tall and features 6-inch, lightly scented white flower spikes in June to July. It has the added bonus of resonant purple-red fall color.
Many summer-flowering perennials have fragrant foliage or flowers. Garden lilies provide stately fragrance, taken in the character of do some hostas. The scent of hosta plantaginea’sitting large, pure white flowers is fabulous.
Try some herbs, too. Several varieties of lavender are hardy in our climate if given good drainage. Most types of thyme are sound in our area too. Plant a lemon-scented diversity that will release its scent while brushed against. Rosemary is an essential for the fragrance garden, and it can be brought in to increase in a sunny window over the winter. Annual herbs are inexpensive and highly balmy. Try adding several types of basil to the garden bed for a spicy scent and to advance your summer menus.
One of my favorite sweet-scented plants is plant living but a year heliotrope. Grow this single near a patio or sitting area and enjoy its delicious vanilla fragrance. Heliotrope is available in white or deep purple and is suitable for container planting.
Fall
Chrysanthemums are the quintessential fall flower. Touch their aromatic leaves to bring back memories of past autumns. Fall is a perfect time to plant pansies, which are offered in rich autumnal hues. Many fall-planted varieties will live on the winter to bloom again next elasticity. Sweet Autumn clematis is a wonderful, spicy, late-blooming vine. A real productive bloomer, it is almost completely covered in small, star-shaped flowers from late summer into fall. It is furthermore more vigorous than its summer-blooming cousins, growing 15 to 20 feet lingering.
Common witchhazel’s sweet-smelling yellow flowers bloom in excessively late fall, as late as early December. This native shrub’s brilliant fall color is an added bonus.
Source: http://www.merwer.com/blog/2008/08/blooms-beauteous-but-think-fragrance-first/