Plant A Fragrant Flower Garden

Favorite Scented Flowers to Grow for Fragrance and Blooms All Season

Feb 24, 2007

Plant these flowers to grow a garden that is deliciously, wonderfully, romantically fragrant, perfumed with floral scent and in bloom all season from spring through fall.

Every gardener loves a fragrant flower, be it spicy, musky or sweetly scented. With careful selection, you can design and plant a flower garden to provide special scents and aromas to appreciate and enjoy from spring all the way through fall. Plant these in a concentrated area as a fragrant theme garden or intersperse them throughout your garden for special fragrant interludes as you pass by.

Early Spring Flowers with Fragrance

In early spring, you will be thrilled at the sight – and scent – of fragrant early blooming minor bulbs including Iris reticulata, Siberian squill and grape hyacinths. Add a few specially fragrant daffodils such as Thalia. And definitely plant the traditional large flowered and strongly scented hyacinths by your front door.

Fragrant Carpet of Flowers in Shade

Springtime in the woodland garden or shaded area offers the wafting scent of ground covering lily of the valley, sweet violets, or a carpet of sweet woodruff. (Tips on Shade Garden Design)

Sweet Scents: Sweet Alyssum and the Best Sweet Peas

The word sweet applies to many fragrant flowers including the annual sweet alyssum and the all time favorite among floral scents, sweet peas. When you purchase your sweet pea seeds, be aware some are more fragrant than others. Be sure the label indicates you are getting a particularly fragrant variety, of which there are many.

Fragrant Roses, Lilacs, Peonies, Lavender

As spring progresses, you will find the air perfumed by lilacs, peonies and roses. Soon lavender and lavandin join the symphony of scents. Some roses will continue blooming throughout the season to provide an ongoing source of fragrant delight. Can you imagine a summer evening perfumed by the roses?

Flowers Fragrant at Night

Many flowers are most strongly scented in the evening. For example, this includes the aptly named night scented stock plus nicotiana, four o’clocks, and the inimitable moonflower vine which along with the nicotiana and four o'clocks will bloom long into the fall.

Favorite Fragrant Perennials

Among perennials favored for fragrance, you must plant the spicily scented dianthus for bloom from spring into summer. Don’t miss scented iris cultivars such as "Royal Storm," "Scented Bubbles," "Vanity," or "Midnight" and specially fragrant daylilies such as "Siloam Double Classic," "Hyperion," "Chorus Line," and "Raspberry Candy." For a shady garden be sure to grow fragrant hostas such as "Honeybells," "Fragrant Bouquet," "Fragrant Blue," "Heaven Scent," "So Sweet," "Aphrodite," and "Royal Standard" along with the species, H. plantaginea.

Late Summer Flowers for Fragrance

Phlox are in a class of their own when it comes to fragrance and the border phlox will bloom from summer into the fall if deadheaded, fed and watered. Late summer bloomers with strong fragrance also include the exotic and heady tuberose which is not winter hardy but is still worth growing even if you need to replace it every year. Naked ladies or Lycoris squamigera, a moderately hardy bulb, is another wonderful scented late summer bloomer with lovely spidery pink flowers atop long thin bare stems.

Well Loved Smells of Fall

Although it is a flowering vine, I must mention sweet autumn clematis or Clematis terniflora, its infinite numbered white starry flowers intensely fragrant and so welcome in the fall garden. One fragrance to avoid in the fall garden is that of burning leaves; for the sake of your flowers (and air quality), compost your leaves instead of consigning them to the burn pile.

Aromatic Foliage

Last but not least, remember to use plants with aromatic foliage such as lemon verbena, scented geraniums, and herbs such as basil, rosemary and lavender. Some are best grown underfoot between step stones where passers by will crush the foliage and release the scent. For this purpose, a favorite plant is creeping thyme.

Design for Fragrance and Blooms All Season

I hope this gives you inspiration and ideas for designing and planting a garden full of heady fragrance, sweet perfume, and spicy aromas to please the nose – and the eye – all through the growing season.

The copyright of the article Plant A Fragrant Flower Garden in Flower Gardens is owned by Barbara M. Martin. Permission to republish Plant A Fragrant Flower Garden in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Sep 1, 2007 7:10 PM

bebob51 :

Just a question...I have planted some Sugar Snap Peas and while I thought they'd grow 'tall' they're only about 10" but they are giving me a few peas,delicious they are, but not many. Have about 12 plants, wondering if I did something wrong, they're so little.
: (

Sep 1, 2007 7:17 PM

bebob51 :

Another question, you can tell I've been in my garden today. Tomatoes are doing fine but now I have a ? re: Narteriums. I found them FULL of something 'black', aphids? I thought they were and last week sprayed with Diazinon and it killed the plant. So, now I nned help please

Sep 1, 2007 8:00 PM

Barbara M. Martin :

There are vining sugar snaps and bush type sugar snaps so it sounds like you didn't plant a vining variety. At least they are producing and the peas taste ok, right? LOL

Sugar Snap just means a general category of nice peas with a lower fiber pod that can be eaten when the peas are still immature... no shelling required. YUM plus, we LOVE less work!

Another possibility is they were planted or are growing in weather that is too hot. High temperatures can stunt the plants and limit yield, too. Keep in mind peas are cool weather plants ....

Sep 1, 2007 8:11 PM

Barbara M. Martin :

Um well, I didn't think Diazinon is even sold to homeowners any more.... kinda toxic stuff, killed a lot of birds and got into groundwater .... But anyway.

Softbodied sucking insects in quantity on nasturtiums are probably aphids, sometimes they will really cover the plant. In some gardens these are used as a trap crop to try to divert the aphids from other plantings.

No need for the big guns on aphids. You can knock aphids off the plant with a strong spray of water from the garden hose, or you can treat them with commercially formulated insecticidal soap, or you can just be patient and wait for the ladybugs to come along and control them for you.

Hope this helps!

Sep 1, 2007 8:28 PM

Barbara M. Martin :

FYI Here is information from <b><a href="http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/chemicals/diazinon-fact sheet.htm">the EPA about stopping Diazinon sales</a></b>.

Sep 2, 2007 1:10 PM

bebob51 :

Barbara,
Thanks so much for info. On my way to buy Lady Bugs, they're
just 'cute'...but I will be water spraying them , today. Also,
had no idea re: Diazinon, was found in the shed, probably very
old.
Thanks again, didn't know who to ask.

Sep 4, 2007 4:11 PM

Barbara M. Martin :

It's absolutely understandable. Thinking has changed a lot in recent years -- modern IPM or Integrated Pest Management principles direct gardeners to use the least toxic means to control pests and even suggest that sometimes damage can be tolerated if it is only cosmetic and does not threaten the life or usefulness of the plant.
Another couple of once widely used chemicals that are no longer sold for home garden use that one might find in the shed are Dursban and Lindane... seems like every year we find more safety reasons to restrict chemical use in the garden.