Scented plants tap into the brain’s emotions. They trigger nostalgia, calm, happiness or other memories.
And scent is vital for wildlife. Foraging pollinators use scent to help find their way to nectar and pollen.
Yet many of today’s plant varieties have had scent bred out of them. While we were all focused on getting plants that had bigger flowers, that bloomed for longer or were a more convenient size, fragrance dropped down the list of priorities.
That’s why Tony Hall, Kew Gardens’ Head of Arboretum & Temperate Collections has written Gardening with Scented Plants (Kew Publishing). At home he is also a bee-keeper, so he’s aware of the wildlife issues around plants losing their scent. (note that links to Amazon are affiliate, see disclosure.)
Gardening With Scented Plants lists over 200 scented plants with advice on growing them, plus lists of scented plants by month and colour.
Designing a garden with scented plants
You don’t need every plant to be scented. Tony suggests that you position a few scented plants around the garden.
Consider when the scented plant flowers. You may have a spring flowering scented shrub in a border, for example. Then when those flowers are over, a summer-flowering scented perennial can take over.
Position scented plants at the front of a border or alongside a path. Grow a scented climber around a doorway or fence. Put pots of scented plants on a terrace or patio, close to where you sit.
And the front garden is ideal for scented plants. They’re a treat for passersby and you’ll enjoy them as you enter and leave the house.
Grow scented climbers, such as wisteria, chocolate vine or roses, around a door or gate. Some varieties of wisteria are invasive in some areas, so check what type of wisteria is suitable for your garden.
Scented plants around doorways and gates make entering and leaving the house a happy experience. Top shows lavender in troughs by a front door. Above is Dan Cooper’s back gate framed by fragrant Trachelospermum jasminoides or Star Jasmine. See more of Dan Cooper’s garden in A Garden For Entertaining.
Best scented plants for winter
Winter scent is often very powerful. ‘Plants have to work harder to attract the pollinators in winter,’ says Tony. So their fragrance is often show-stopping.
When I visited the new winter garden at Kew, designed by Tony, the first thing I noticed was the amazing scent. It came mainly from three varieties of plant, each positioned several yards away from the other. I was there with my daughter and we both agreed that this section of Kew was a revelation, both for winter colour and scent. You can see it in brilliant winter plants for colour and scent.
Edgworthia chrysantha (paperbush)
Edgworthia is also known as paperbush or yellow daphne. Its scent is sweet with a hint of clove, and it’s exceptionally powerful. The flowers are sculpturally displayed on bare stems – they look very striking. Edgworthia is hardy to minus 17C/0F.
Edgworthia chrysantha (paperbush or Yellow Daphne). The flowers turn from yellow to white.
Viburnums for traffic-stopping fragrance
There is a viburnum in my front garden. It’s called Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ (Arrowwood ‘Dawn) and has pretty pink flowers. I have seen passers-by screech to a halt to smell the sweet soft scent, which has been compared to vanilla and lilac.
‘Lots of viburnums have good scent,’ says Tony. However, when you are choosing and buying plants, it’s important to check what variety it is. Plants that have been bred to be longer-flowering or as dwarf plants for patios may not have as good a scent as the original older varieties.
Viburnum carlesii has a beautiful winter fragrance. The scent is ‘rich, spicy, vanilla’ and this shrub is happy in sun or partial shade. It’s very cold tolerant, hardy to down minus 34C/minus 30F.
Sweet box/Christmas box/Sarcococca confusa
This shrub looks like box and clips nicely into balls, but doesn’t suffer from the box blight and box tree moth caterpillar. It has powerfully scented white flowers.
Place sweet box next to paths and doorways to enjoy the fragrance as you go past. Hardy down to minus 28C/minus 20F.
Sweet box (Sarcococca confusa) is also known as Christmas box because it flowers in the winter. It has a sweet vanilla and honey-like fragrance.
Scented plants for spring
Tony says that the narcissi, especially Narcissus ‘Paperwhite’, are often beautifully scented. ‘Some tulips have a certain amount of scent, but not as much as the narcissi,’ he says.
At Kew, a double-flowering narcissus called ‘Avalanche’ was smelling particularly delicious as was a clump of Tazetta narcissi. Find out more about how to grow daffodils (narcissi) here.
One of the many fragranced narcissi at Kew Gardens. Check variety for fragrance before buying.
Lilacs (Syringa)
Lilacs are a classic English country garden shrub. Their name stands for fragrance, but even some of the modern lilacs have had fragrance bred out of them. They’re very cold hardy (down to minus 40C/minus 40F) and were considered to be Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite flower.
However, like many shrubs, lilacs have been somewhat forgotten in garden design today. That’s a pity because flowering shrubs are easy-care and wildlife-friendly.
Tony describes lilac as the ‘perfect cottage garden plant.’ (See 25 cottage garden plants for more gorgeous cottage garden plants!)
An early flowering lilac (Syringa hyacinthiflora) which has a glorious scent. And, of course, hyacinths themselves will fill a garden with scent in spring. The scent of lilacs is considered to be calming and a stress-reliever.
Lily of the valley – one of the few scented plants that grows well in shade
Lily-of-the-valley (Convollaria majalis)was also considered to be a favourite of the late Queen Elizabeth II. It has a pretty, sweetly scented flower – but it carries a warning. In some places, lily-of-the-valley is invasive, so check that for your area before planting it.
However, lily-of-the-valley has been growing in my garden for decades and has hardly spread. It’s a woodland plant, so grows well in shade. And it’s another very hardy bulb, down to minus 40C/minus 40F.
Lily -of-the-valley (Convollaria majalis) is a sweet, modest late spring plant – but it can be invasive in certain areas.
Scented plants for summer – and why scented plants prefer full sun
Tony’s book, Gardening With Scented Plants, has many recommendations for summer-flowering scented plants. Tony says that flowers have developed to attract certain pollinators and they are the most fragrant when those pollinators are out. ‘You’ll find that a flower’s fragrance is at its most powerful around midday, when most of the pollinators are looking for nectar and pollen.’
This is why scented plants are generally ‘full sun or light shade’. Bees and butterflies like to forage in the sun. Quite a few scented plants are happy with dappled shade, but very few will flower well in full shade, according to Tony.
Nicotiana (Tobacco Plant) – a night-scented flower for summer evenings
Tony says that the night-scented plants have developed to attract the evening pollinators, such as moths, certain beetles, bats and even some bees. These usually have pale flowers and a powerful scent so that the pollinators can find them in the dark.
Plant Tobacco Plant (Nicotiana) near where you’ll be sitting on a summer evening to enjoy the scent. It’s exceptionally long-flowering and will bloom from early summer to early autumn/fall. Usually treated as an annual, it’s very easy to grow from seed. If your winters never freeze, then it is a short-lived perennial, so will survive for a few years in your garden.
Nicotiana (Tobacco Plant) in troughs in a rented garden. This garden was created entirely out of pots and containers. The air was filled with scent and buzzing with happy pollinators.
Lilies for dramatic impact and brilliant scent
Lilies are one of the most showy plants in the garden. They are brilliant for pots and not difficult to grow. And their scent is so memorable!
Tony says that you do need to be careful about not getting lily pollen on your clothes as it will stain, but otherwise these are a stunning choice for a mid to late summer garden.
These striking Oriental lilies are planted beside a seating area so that the garden owners can enjoy the fragrance as well as a blaze of colour.
Roses – there’s a scented rose for every garden
There are over 4000 varieties of roses, but many newer ones have lost their scent. However, rose growers such as David Austin Roses and Peter Beales have a search facility for ‘fragrance’ on their websites. And if there is a fragrance, it’s usually mentioned on labels.
Tony suggests that if you’re buying a plant in flower, you sniff it to see if it has fragrance. No-one needs to have a rose fragrance described to them – it is the best known of all the garden scents. Aromatherapists use rose oils widely as anti-depressants or to calm people.
Tony identifies Rose ‘Felicia’ as a ‘prolific, disease-resistant rose…with a strong, fruity, musky scent.’ Seen here at Doddington Place Gardens in Kent, it is one of the plants in ‘6 perennial flowers that bloom all summer.’
Lavender – widely used to relieve anxiety or stress and improve sleep
Tony explains that lavender has been grown for its medicinal qualities for centuries. Most lavenders have a distinctive lavender fragrance which is released when you brush your hand across it.
Lavender is loved by bees and butterflies. I’ve been growing Lavender ‘Munstead’ in my garden for many years and it is buzzing with pollinators in high summer.
You will often be told to prune lavender lightly or to avoid ‘cutting into the wood.’ But this can make lavender straggly. To keep lavender plants in smart shapes, prune it neatly and quite close. There is more about this in Absolutely The Best Way To Prune Lavender. My lavender lasted 14 years and was only removed because I was re-designing that part of the garden.
I pruned my lavender back hard once a year, immediately after flowering. It always bounced back to look like this. Apart from that, lavender needs virtually no care at all.
Autumn/fall scented plants – foliage is an important source of scent too!
Nicotiana is still blooming in autumn, and there are several varieties of scented autumn roses and viburnum. But Tony’s favourite is a tree.
The Katsura Tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) is a tree with heart-shaped leaves that change colour throughout the summer. In autumn/fall, they turn vibrant shades of yellow, pink and orange and give off a candy floss smell that fills the air.
These heart shaped leaves change colour throughout the summer and end up emitting a candy floss and caramel aroma. Hardy to minus 34C/minus 30F.
Scented climbers – grow them up a fence or around a door
Some of the best scented plants are climbers. As well as wisteria and several climbing or rambling roses, Gardening With Scented Plants also identifies solanum, several clematis varieties, honeysuckle and jasmine. But one of my own favourites is the chocolate vine.
The chocolate vine (Akebia quinata) has delicate dark maroon red flowers in spring. If you’re walking along a street and suddenly smell a strong, sweet vanilla fragrance, look out for a chocolate vine. It’s happy in full sun or partial shade, and I’ve known several to grow on north-facing walls (although there was a fairly open aspect.)
Chocolate vine (Akebia quinata) has clusters of small flowers almost hidden amongst the foliage. But the scent is quite distinctive.
Do scented flowers attract wasps?
No, says Tony. Pollinators are attracted to scented flowers because it’s how they find the nectar and pollen. But wasps are not pollinators. They live on insects and do drink the nectar from flowers, but won’t especially be attracted by the scent. ‘Wasps will land on any and every flower – they won’t seek out scented ones.’
Will scented plants make my hay fever worse?
No. Once again, Tony says that hay fever is about pollen, not about scent. Hay fever is triggered by pollen (and other factors, such as dust mites or funghi). But the scent is not created by pollen.
‘If a plant has a strong scent, you don’t need to put your face too close to the pollen to smell it,’ explains Tony.
Pin to remember scented plants
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