SCENTED plants bring another dimension to any garden with their evocative fragrances.
Indeed, they can make your garden “scentsational”.
Chinese Star Jasmine is an exceptionally tough climber with glossy, green foliage and deliciously fragrant, white, starshaped flowers over late spring to midsummer. It’s an attractive climber for covering walls, fences and veranda posts, but can also be used as a groundcover. Chinese Star Jasmine summer heat very well and will delight with its highly perfumed late spring and summer flowers.
Gardenias have a combination of glossy green foliage, creamy flowers and hauntingly beautiful scents that make them hard to resist. Gardenia fragrances are found in some of the world’s most expensive and popular perfumes but none in the bottle are like the real thing. Gardenias are real pot stars, thriving in feature pots that prefer positions with some afternoon shade or semi shade. Gardenia Ocean Pearl has double white flowers and a compact, dense habit to around 50cm.
If you’re looking for a fragrant hedge it’s difficult to go past Orange Jessamine ( Murraya paniculata). This evergreen glossy leave shrub can grow to 3m and with a bit of clipping, forms a fine dense hedge. Once established, it stands up to Perth.
If you love a good port, a Port Wine Magnolia might be the go. MicheliaCoCo is a new form of the old favourite. CoCo has larger foliage and flowers than the common form and grows to 2-3m high. Over the warmer months, it produces flushes of yellowish-purple tinged flowers that have a sweet banana-come-port wine fragrance.
When anyone is given a rose, their instinctive reaction is to smell it, for fragrance is the mystical soul of the rose. It can delight the senses and bring back a thousand memories.
The magic of fragrant roses lies in their enticing blend of essential oils, produced along the lower petal surfaces. Rose fragrance is usually strongest in the morning and on sunny days when the soil is moist. Rose scents vary enormously but some of the most identifiable are sweet old rose, citrus, apple, violet, clove, myrrh, fruity and spicy.
The hybrid tea rose Double Delight is definitely in the ‘knocks your socks off’ category and often tops the list when asked “what’s the most fragrant rose?”. It has also been awarded the American Rose Society's highest award for fragrance. It’s certainly a delight, with exhibition quality blooms of double cream, edged with red.
Some other fragrant hybrid tea roses are Blue Moon, Candlelight, Fragrant Cloud, Granada Mr Lincoln, Perfume Passion and Pope John Paul II.
Which is the most fragrant? Well, I say let your nose be the judge.
-Tim Parker, published in Fremantle Gazette Oct 2015
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