Creating A Delightfully Fragrant Garden Just Makes Good Scents

As a garden center owner for over three decades, I've seen all kinds of gardeners come in to buy plants, and without exception, regardless of skill level, they all have one habit in common: Give them a nice flower and they'll be there in no time. He dipped the quinosol into the heart to see if it had any scent.

We all are, including me. It's almost funny, especially when you stick your nose into a Casa Blanca or Stargazer lily and get bright orange pollen all over your face. We all love a beautiful, colorful garden, but when we can add fragrance to the mix, it just elevates us to a different state of consciousness.

When we talk about scents, we usually mean pleasant scents, as opposed to scents that are considered unpleasant or unpleasant. Of course, one person's scent may be another person's - what I consider luxury may be disgusting to you. But hey, isn't that what makes life interesting?

I should say that all these odors which plants emit through the parts of their flowers or through their leaves and bark are for diffusion or protection. In other words, plants evolved scents to survive. Whether we can enjoy it is secondary.

Our North West gardens are filled with plants that have a distinctive fragrance. From the floral scents of roses and lilies to the fresh and spicy scents of evergreens and jasmine to the woody scents of a wide range of greens, there is no shortage of ways to flavor our gardens.

Even at this time of the year, when there are very few flowering plants, we can enjoy the delicately fragrant flowers of witch hazel or the fragrant flowers of pink viburnum. In just a few weeks, Winter Daphne will bloom with a fragrance that will fill the entire yard.

During the spring, lilies, wisteria, lilacs, roses and many other beautiful bushes, perennials and associations will be filled with pleasant aromas that can bring us all sorts of things. Feelings, including memories of past experiences, romance, and perhaps time spent at the park with the grandparents. Just the smell of petunias in bloom takes me back to being 14 years old and to my local garden center growing petunias in gallon jugs for my high school proms.

I remember—perhaps not fondly—my first experience with the voodoo lily. It grew near our frat house, and one of my brothers thought it would be fun to make me cut a putrid-smelling flower and put it on my desk while I was in class, maybe studying anatomy or plant taxonomy. I will never forget the scent of jasmine blooming on our brick stove, or the evening scent of the warm, very fragrant flowers blooming at night on the jasmine bush near our front porch.

Perfumes are much more than cocktails of various organic compounds that plants emit, protecting their appearance. They embody feelings, memories and experiences from our lives, waiting to be remembered every time we step out into the garden.

Only aromatic plants make sense to include in our landscapes. This is another dimension of gardening that makes it so interesting. This, fellow gardener, has two cents on garden fragrances.

Sunnyside Nursery in Marysville is represented by Steve Smith and can be reached at sunnysidenursery@msn.com.