Today I would like to show you a few of the sweetest smelling flowers and shrubs in our gardens. They are some of my favorite plants and often also very popular with honeybees, other nectar loving insects and hummingbirds.
Several of them look very beautiful and eye-catching, but other are quite modest in their looks, but they make it up with their attractive sweet fragrance.
Our Sweetest Scented Roses and Lavender.
One of the sweetest and most beautiful smelling flowers in our garden is Othello rose, bred by David Austin. Its fragrance is like that of many of the old fashioned roses. It is very sweet, rose scent, also associated with rose essential oil made from Rosa Damascena.
Othello rose has been in our garden since the early Summer of 2015 and I have mentioned it a few times already in my previous post. In this article you can see how it has grown within the last 3 years.
Here is a close up on this magnificent rose.
Another rose which also smells wonderful, is very beautiful, and besides that, is one of the best and biggest roses in our garden, is Memorial Day rose. I have also written about it on this blog several times. This was the other rose which was featured in the already mentioned article. You can see there how amazingly fast is has grown to a really big size an how much it has changed since I have purchased it a s rather small shrub.
Here is a close up of one of the flowers of this rose. The shape, colour and size of the flowers of this unique rose is changing during the growing season.
Another flower and at the same time herb, which a very strong and distinctive fragrance, is lavender and we are usually growing more than one variety. Here is Lavandula angustifolia, from which very popular lavender essential oil could be made. There are also other species of lavender from which essential oils are made, like Spike Lavender, but they smell a bit differently and have other look and properties.
If you would like to buy really good, not-adulterated therapeutic grade lavender essential oil, or many other essential oils, see where I purchase my essential oils and why I have chosen this company.
We have two shrubs of this kind of lavender in our garden and it usually grows very well, except maybe the last Summer of 2017 because it was extremely wet and cold.
All lavenders love sun and do not like over-watering. They are usually easy to grow once you plant them, but not easy to start from seeds. In our garden, once they start blooming sometimes in Spring, around May, they continue blooming to the frost, with the biggest abundance of flowers during Summer. This plant is certainly worth keeping in the garden if you have the proper space. It adds a beautiful scent to the garden and you can collect the flowers to make not only essential oils (if you have lots of them, have the proper equipment and know how to do it), but the flowers could be also used for making scented bundles and sachets for your home ,or used for making fragrant oils, cosmetics, soaps etc.
I think lavender goes particularly well with roses grown beside them and adding a variety and beauty to the border. Here it is in our garden growing beside Othello rose. I think the shapes and colours complement each other.
Here is another lavender of the same kind growing beside Memorial Day rose.
Butterfly Bushes or Buddleias.
Beside these so strongly scented roses, our two butterfly bushes (also called buddleia or buddleja and summer lilac), have very nice, sweet scent. They certainly live up to their name and attract many butterflies, particularly, Monarch, but also moths, bees, other nectar loving insects and even hummingbirds.
Below is our dark-pink butterfly bush. It grows really fast. I cut it back to about 1/4 size before Winter so I can cover it up with burlap, and then I cut it back again almost to the ground in Spring, to encourage fresh growth and flowering. I am not sure what is the exact name of this variety. You can learn more about buddleias from my article here.
In the next picture is another butterfly bush we have – this one has light purple-blue flowers and is a miniature variety, so it is growing slower and only to about 2-2.5 feet.
Here is how they looked a year later in September 2017, after they were quite neglected when I have left my garden for almost 2 months during my vacation. As you can see, they have survived quite well and the bigger variety has grown a lot. Both of them were blooming profusely. I normally cut the spent flowers, but here they were just growing freely during my absence. We have also finally got our new fence – here it is still unfinished.
Sweet Mock Orange – Smells Like Jasmine.
Another very beautifully scented bush we have is Sweet Mock Orange, which I just call Jasmine. The scent is very sweet and to me pretty strong and very much like jasmine’s, but not all people actually can smell its fragrance. I have noticed that one needs to have a pretty good sense of smell to fully appreciate its scent. I personally love its fragrance and it is one of my favorite Spring-blooming shrubs. I have written about it more in this article.
A close up on this beautiful and so sweet scented plant. I only wish it would be blooming for much longer and not only in late Spring or early Summer.
Night Scented Stock – Add Sweet Scent to Your Garden at Night.
Finally we also have Night Scented Stock – (Matthiola Bicornis) – I am not sure if this is exactly this variety. It is also called Evening Scented Stock or Perfume Plant. It is a very popular flower in my native country of Poland and it is called there “Maciejka“.
I have planted it first in 2015, but then it self-sown the next year, so I have just let it grow. This flowers look quite insignificant, but the smell is very sweet and rather strong in evening and at night. It could be even overpowering in small spaces with little air movement. This is a strange plant, which similarly to the real Jasmine (Jasminum), smells strongly only after the sun goes down. During the day its scent seems to disappear.
As you can see, the flowers are quite small. Here is a close up on some of them.
I like its smells and it reminds me of Polish gardens. We have it growing in the middle of our garden where there is a lot of sunshine. It likes a sunny spot and soil that is not too wet. It is very easy-going flower. It is good to plant it where you can smell its very sweet fragrance in evening, but perhaps not too close to your bedroom so it won’t feel overpowering.
Sweet Smelling Herbs in Our Garden and What Sweet Scented Plants Do You Have?
I originally also wanted to write about sweet smelling herbs in our garden, but this article is already quite long, so perhaps I will write about them some other time. Do you have many sweet scented plants in your garden and what kind of plants they are? Maybe you can tell us about them in your comments. Thank you.
What Has Inspired Me to Write this Article – the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge – “Sweet”.
I was inspired to write this article by the past week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge prompt – “Sweet“. I think this article works very well for this subject. To see how I have interpreted this theme on my other blog Light Vision please follow this link.
Following and Sharing this Blog.
If you like this blog post, please share it with other people who might be inserted in reading it as well. Thank you. I encourage you to follow or subscribe to my blog to receive automatic updates, so you won’t miss future posts. I look forward to your comments.
The Copyright, Usage Licence and Fine Art Prints.
All photographs and this article are copyrighted by me, Renata Ratajczyk unless otherwise mentioned. I you would like to use any of them in your publications, on your website, or purchase these photographs as fine art prints, please contact me.
My Other Blog – Light Vision.
If you like this blog, you might also like to visit my other blog – Light Vision, where I write about photography, art and travel. Thank you for visiting, liking and sharing my blogs.
Other Articles You Might Also Like to Read.
- How to Grow Organic Food in Your Garden – Get Inspired.
- Villa Garzoni Gardens, Italy – Part One – Meet some Cheeky Fantasy Animals
- How to Choose the Best Tomato Plants For Your Garden – Part 1.
- Roses Blooming in our garden – Part 1.
- Roses Blooming in our garden – Part 2.
- How to Prepare Roses for Winter.
- Memorial Day Rose.
- Growing Eden Climbing Rose.
- Plants Which Can Thrive on Neglect – Part 1.
- Visiting Niagara Park’s Botanical Gardens, Part 1.
- Visiting Niagara Park’s Botanical Gardens, Part 2.
- A Beautiful Italian Garden For You to Visit – “Giardino Sigurtà” in Valeggio sul Mincio, Northern Italy.
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