![In the right spot, frangipani can thrive - even in our climate. Picture Shutterstock In the right spot, frangipani can thrive - even in our climate. Picture Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/Z4Q6sUEHdcmw72MBPYgZkU/7ab9e435-7da2-48a7-bfd0-a35988132bb8.jpg/r0_27_1000_589_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Most flowers are fragrant, if you care to stick your nose close to them, sniffing deeply and risking bees and a bad case of sinus.
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Only a few blooms, though, have that generous gift of wafting their scent right across your garden and into the house.
Lavender is a delight, for example, but unless you brush against the flowers, or use the bushes to dry underwear, sheets, or tea towels, you'll rarely notice the fragrance. Alyssum has a sweet honey scent, but you need to crouch down to smell it.
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Spending your days, and nights, with a gentle waft of perfume gives a sense of comfort, happiness and a feeling that all is good in this generous world - no matter what the headlines say. But for that to happen, you need perfume with power. And no, a dab of scented oil won't do the same, though it may be pleasant. There is something about the way that scents that arise from the natural world, ebbing and flowing and mingling, that is entirely different from any perfume humans can craft.
The following are perfumes with punch. Avoid them if you have perfume allergies. Otherwise, lift your face to the sky, inhale deeply, and enjoy every breath.
Port wine magnolia
This is not a magnolia, nor used to make port wine. It is an insignificant shrub with almost unnoticeable blooms, until spring arrives and you suddenly meet their scent. I grow ours by our garden path and only remember it's there when the scent floats down onto the garden and up into the house.
Plant your port wine magnolia in full sun or dappled shade where it doesn't matter if it's not flagrantly beautiful, but where the perfume will delight you. It does, however, make an excellent low or tall screening hedge, if you are handy with the clippers.
Gardenia
Gardenia growing is "iffy" in our climate, though if you find exactly the right spot and feed your gardenias well, they will be stunning, giving scent and bright white blooms all summer.
The happiest pair of gardenias I've met locally live in a paved courtyard, growing in big pots filled with slightly acidic potting mix, under the summer shade of a crab apple tree. They get full sun in winter when the crab apple leaves fall. Gardenias are prima donnas. You can almost hear a tatty gardenia whine: "I'm not blooming till everything is perfect and if you are mean to me, my leaves will turn brown."
I adore gardenia perfume, but I don't have a spot where I'm sure they'll be happy. I also prefer a garden that mostly looks after itself.
Frangipani
Frangipani are happiest as subtropical plants, which means you need to be very determined to grow them here, but if you find the right place then they'll thrive. Look for a north-facing wall, a courtyard, a patio, a roof garden, or even the sunny edge of a veranda, any spot that gets limited frost and no cold winds. Make sure your frangipani gets at least six hours of direct sunlight a day - assuming the sun does shine this summer.
Frangipani grow superbly in large containers, will tolerate a fair amount of neglect, and strike easily from cuttings. Frangipani blooms range from white, to rich cream with a yellow centre, to a flagrant pink. Sadly, frangipani do grow slowly - and even more slowly in cool to temperate climates, and over feeding will kill them, instead of speeding things up. In very chilly times it's best to move a potted frangipani indoors. Keep the soil almost dry till the weather warms.
If a frangipani branch looks spongy in cold weather, it's beginning to rot. Prune it off fast to save the rest of the tree. And yes - frangipani are worth the planning.
Jasmine
Common jasmine (Jasminum officinale) is possibly the most pervasive, sweetest scent for any garden. I also suspect that common jasmine plans to take over the world, one garden at a time. Once you have a jasmine plant, it pops up in the sneakiest place possible and you won't notice till it blooms again. Avoid. Try Chinese star jasmine instead, or a tree jasmine bush, for an almost equal scent.
Roses
I'm not even going to try to suggest a rose to you. Roses have a thousand scents, or possibly more, and the ones I adore may make you feel you're in an 19th century boudoir, something I rather like but you may despise.
The way to choose a rose by perfume is to wait till November, when the roses are blooming in the garden centre, spend an hour or two sniffing, make a shortlist of your favourite half dozen, place them on the cart, then tear up the list and buy them all. Any rose labelled "hybrid musk" will scent your garden, but there are others equally strong scented.
Oriental Lilies
A dear friend, now sadly lost to us, used to bring me buckets of these each Christmas - more buckets full than I have vases to put them in (Val never did things in halves). The scent was almost thick enough to float on - and vigorous enough to give a few subsequent visitors hay fever. Choose the most perfumed varieties you can find i.e. look for "strongly scented" on the label or catalogue. Oriental lilies love moist soil, "with their feet in the shade and heads in the sun", as old garden lore decrees. Feed at least twice a year or give slow-release fertiliser every spring. They are worth the fuss. Once you have them in the right place, with the correct feeding and water regime, oriental lilies will multiply gloriously till you have a jungle of them - and need to give away buckets of them, too. They won't tolerate long droughts, though - some watering is essential.
Chocolate cosmos
Chocolate cosmos is a perennial, unlike the common fast-growing cosmos. It's deep red-brown velvet flowers look and smell fabulous. Sadly, the local wallabies think chocolate cosmos is delicious, and none of the three I have planted at various times survived their guzzling. Chocolate cosmos will die in heavy frost - once again, try a patio pot, sunny wall or a courtyard. It is a truly stunning plant, worth trying, especially as it releases its perfume at dusk, just when you are coming home from work, and deeply scents the night as you finally have time to put your feet up and take a deep breath of air. Make sure it has full sun, or you may miss the best of its perfume. The cheapest way to get a good number is to plant seeds now: scatter them, then just brush soil over them rather than planting deeply, about a finger length apart.
Fresh cut grass
Our grass has just had its first spring mow. The scent is subtle but pervasive, and I woke up smiling. We let mints ramble through our grasses and other ground covers, and when mown, the world feels fresh and full of endless possibilities.
Scented plants shouldn't be limited to just your own garden. Adopt a space. Argue with the authorities till they let you plant it with rosemary, lavender, hybrid musk roses like Buff Beauty or even old fashioned 'Peace', which we are all in need of. The world needs every atom of happiness it can get - and a gardenia in full bloom, a bed of dianthus, or a climbing Papa Meiland rose spreading scent below it, can work magic.
And don't just stick to one perfumed plant. The best of all scents is the unpredictable marriage of many, many fragrant plants. With good planning, the perfumes of spring will power their way through summer too.
This week I am:
- Planting lettuce, carrot and red spring onion seeds, partly because they all tolerate cold, wet soil, but mostly because the late planted baby carrots I put in last autumn have germinated and are growing strongly. Do not argue with a carrot. If they say it's the right time to emerge into the world, they are possibly right.
- Reminding myself that the latest big frost here was at the end of November, and even a December frost has been known. Carrots are not always right.
- Gathering the energy to prune the dead leaves from the tree ferns, the last of the winter blooming salvias, and the tatty frost-bitten leaves of the native ginger.
- Revelling in the scent of fresh mown grass, interspersed with apple mint and just a touch of garlic chives.
- Leaving the gone-to-seed radish, kale, bok choi and other brassicas in the garden, as now they have bloomed they'll inhibit the germination of weed seeds. I'll haul them out only when ready to put in the corn seedlings, and our main crop of tomatoes.
- Feeding everything. In a normal year shrubs and trees do at least 30 per cent of their growth in spring, if well fed and watered. Wet years mean even more growth, and more growth means your plants need more tucker. Beware of too much fast growth though, as overfed, overwatered plants may have shallow roots, as well as wet and heavy tops, and may fall over, roots and all.
- Rejoicing in the first flowers on the young red-fruited native finger limes. We may finally have red 'vegan caviar' floating in our cold drinks or topping a baked potato, instead of the pale creamy-green ones.
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