As mid summer approaches I keep watch for the flowers to open on a honeysuckle which weaves through and over the beech hedge just outside the back door. It’s not as pretty as many, with egg yellow flowers turning to white, but the scent is a lingering mix of coconut and mango, exotic, sweet and intoxicating.
So many plants in our gardens are scented, not intended for our enjoyment at all, but for very practical reasons. The scent of flowers is produced by aromatic oils evaporating as they are warmed by the sun with the purpose of attracting pollinating insects. Leaves may be scented as a defense mechanism against sap sucking insects or herbivores, but we interpret and enjoy them in our own way.
The Philadlephus in my garden is too sweet and floral for me to be reminded of oranges, which its common name of mock orange would have me think, but there is a thyme in a pot by a bench which is at a perfect height for running my hand through to pick up the strongest scent of sweet oranges. The roses have a wide range of aromas, from the sharpness of sherbet lemons through old fashioned face powder to very disappointingly non-existent.
The most unusual scent in my garden this summer is from a night scented stock, the seeds of which I grew from a packet free with a magazine. By day it has no smell at all but as the light fades it fills the evening air around it with warm cinnamon and cloves. Nearby I can smell aniseed from the fennel and the rich and complex aroma of a good curry from Helichrysum, from which it gets its common name of curry plant,. The unexpectedly rich and spicy scented Buddleia we all know to be brilliant for nectar feeding butterflies, but it must be full of pollen too, a good deep sniff of it is guaranteed to make me sneeze, and then there is the lavender, well known for the many properties of its scent and loved by almost everyone, even those whose gardens are totally unsuitable for it.
From the fruit bowl to the spice rack and childhood memories of granny’s Eau de Cologne, the scents of our garden plants can take us around the world and back again. Simply scentsational.
