Fragrant plants add a new dimension to the garden, enhancing both its color and textural schemes. This garden creates a soothing ambiance that integrates the earthy, aromatic scents of herbs with the sweet smells of flowers. When planting herbs, allow them to grow over the edge of a path or patio so that they exude their scents when they are brushed by garden strollers. Additionally consider prevailing wind directions during the bloom period of fragrant plants and place them so as to reap the most impact.
How would you like to go outside and have beautifully scented flowers to smell? Fragrances provide us with a sense of pleasure. Just smelling a scented flower gives us a great feeling. Every time you step outside of your house you can enjoy a wonderful, natural scent. Or how about opening a window and letting in those fresh fragrant scents. Here are a few easy to grow fragrant plants that are guaranteed to provide you with some great fragrances.
Fragrant Plants To Consider Using
English Lavender
These flowers come in white, pink, blue, and purple. This plant is well known for its aromatherapy qualities. This plant is not only wonderfully fragrant it is also very ornamental. This plant blooms in early to late summer. Lavender can tolerate hot, dry conditions better than humid ones. It appreciates regular moisture, growing it in damp soil promotes fungal diseases and root rot. Plant lavender in a sharply drained soil in a spot where you brush by its foliage and release that magnificent scent. Prune each stem back to the plant’s base after it blooms. To maintain a nice-shaped plant base trim branches during the early part of the growing season. These plants are one to four feet in height and one to five feet in width. They prefer full sun and are fully heat tolerant and cold hardy.
Angels Trumpet
In the evenings from early summer to fall, angel’s trumpet unrolls its buds, exuding an intense perfume. They bloom in the summer and fall months. This plant is nocturnal so by noon it is closing up. These exotic flowers are white, yellow, pink, red, and orange. Try to keep this plant evenly moist. Dead-heading won’t make the plant bloom any better, but it will keep it from self-seeding and becoming invasive. Use extreme caution when handling the plant, all parts of the angel’s trumpet are toxic. Do not plant angels trumpet in a yard with children and pets. This plant grows to two feet tall and three to four feet wide. The plant is heat tolerant and cold hardy. Remember to keep the soil moist and well-drained.
Pinks
This wonderfully fragrant plant grows to three feet in height and one to three feet in width. The great fragrance and a range of colors makes this a popular garden plant. This durable plant is heat tolerant and cold hardy. When the flowers are finished blooming be sure to deadhead at the base of the stem. They will bloom again for season-long color. They bloom in the late spring. Good drainage is vital for this plant, so add a shovelful of sand to the planting hole or plant in containers, where the soil texture is easy to control. They also prefer alkaline soil so add lime if your soil is acid.
Lily of The Valley
Lilly of the valley has a waxy bell-shaped white or pink flowers that last for about a month in late spring. Once the flowers fade, long pointy tipped oval leaves and glossy red berries will show. Sweetly scented yet tough these plants make a great ground cover. They even tolerate the dry shade found under trees. This plant is heat tolerant and cold hardy so it is easy to grow anywhere. This plant grows to eight inches tall and two to three inches wide.
Other Plants
Chinese Lantern a perennial with white, star-shaped, slightly fragrant flowers in spring followed by bright orange-red seed pods.
Variegated Sage has green and yellow leaves with a fresh herbal scent.
Small Oak Germander a quick-spreading herb that is often used as a ground cover; aromatic with oak-shaped leaves.
Lavender Cotton has a dense, green foliage in spring which turns silver in summer and fall. The leaves smell of lavender.
Weeping Willow have a lance-shaped leaf on drooping branches that almost touch the ground. They obtain yellow-green catkins in spring.
Mealy-Cup Sage is a fast growing perennial grown as an annual. They have violet-blue, long lasting flowers in summer.
Flowering Tobacco have large, white, honey-scented flowers during summer, especially fragrant in th evening.
Rosemary a needle-like, blue-green, sweetly scented foliage; blue flowers from mid-spring through early autumn.
Planting & Aftercare
1. Clear the bed between patio and hedge. Plant Willow at least 3 ft. from the hedge, in a hole twice as wide and as deep as the root ball.
2. Dig up rest of bed 12 inches deep, working in a 4 inch layer of compost and ½ cup of slow-release fertilizer for every square foot of bed.
3. Plant two Chinese Lanterns to the left of the Willow, and four Flowering Tobaccos to its right. Fill in between with Mealy-cup Sage.
4. Fill middle of bed with Variegated Sage spaced about 12 inches apart. Let the Sage’s foliage spill over the garden border and onto the path.
5. Plant groups of four or five Lavender Cotton, Germander, and Rosemary all spaced 8 inches apart along front of design. Water well.
6. Cut back Germander in mid-spring to shape and deadhead in late summer. Trim back herbs once during season for a bushier growth.
