Fragrance is just as crucial as visual appeal when creating a captivating garden.
Tony Hall, Head of Arboretum and Temperate Collections at Kew Gardens, emphasises that scented plants offer more than just attracting wildlife; they play a key role in fostering a therapeutic and multi-sensory outdoor experience.
Hall shares his expert insights on incorporating fragrant flora into your garden, as well as recommending ideal combinations and sources of inspiration.
How scented plants impact the wildlife of your garden
Of course, the more fragrant plants you have dotted about, the more diversity you’ll draw into your garden. Typically, plants that have a more intense scent usually look quite similar.
“It does tend to be that most of the plants that produce good scent are single petaled,” says Hall. “So that means that the senders are open, which makes it much easier for wildlife to get to both the pollen and the nectar.”
However, most new plant breeds are now bred for appearance, and the focus on scent is not cultivated.
“A lot of plants that are now bred for show and longevity,” says Hall, “but they tend to be double flowers, so not only are they not that good for pollinators, they also tend not to produce the scent in the same way that many of the the older single-petal flowers do.”
Hall says things like sweet peas have been bred to have longer stems for cutting, for show, but they’re not as scented. Breeding out scent has also been the case for lilacs and a lot of other garden plants.
“Lots of the roses now have had the scent bred out of them,” says Hall, such as the David Austin or English rose. “A lot of the plant breeders have got carried away – with roses in particular – to have more showy, more colourful [flowers].
“But they’ve also bred for things like disease resistance. So, obviously those kind of things are good for the garden, but not always good for wildlife.”
Annual and biennial plants
If you’re looking for somewhere to start with scented plants, most of the annuals and biennials are very easy to grow from seed.
“Now in spring, the garden centres do a wide range of things that you can grow in containers, like the tobacco plants and Petunias, which are very centred,” says Hall.
“For beginners, it’s really nice to grow – particularly with children – seeds of things like sweet peas, which is so easy. If you pick them regular enough, they’ll flower right away through the summer.
“And tobacco plants, again, are easy to grow from seeds and they’re a really good one for an even scented annual”.
Bulbs
Scented bulbs are easily grown in both pots and beds, it just depends on how you want to grow them.
“The nice thing about bulbs is because they do very well in containers and pots,” says Hall. “So a really good one for a small garden or a patch.
“There’s lots of really nice scented Narcissus, one in particular is called the paper white Narcissus, and that’s a good one because it has a really long flowering season.
“It will start flowering in November, and it will flower right the way through till the end of March.”
Other great bulb choices include the Regal Lily, which can be grown in both beds and pots. “The nice thing about those – and most plants in general – is most of them actually make really good cut flowers.
“So you can have them in the garden, but you can also cut them and bring them into the house and bring that scent inside.”
Herbs
When it comes to herbs, most produce scent through their leaves and stems.
“So they’re the kind of thing that you would have along a path or in a pot closer to the house, so when you brush against it, it would give off its scent,” says Hall.
Hall suggests thyme, fennel and mint.
“Whole fennel is a really nice one, especially in a mixed border, because you can get the green variety and you can get the blonde variety […] fennel is a wonderful kind of liquorish scent.
“You get a lot of scent from mint, so I think things that are actual herbs really need to be along path edges or somewhere where you can brush against them or touch them to release the scent.”
However, if you’re planting common garden mint, it can be invasive, so it’s best grown in a pot. But, if you’re using chocolate mint or lemon mint, they’re not so quite invasive.
“But also they’re not quite so good in taste,” says Hall, “because, you know, they smell of chocolate – they don’t taste of chocolate.”
The best scented arrangements
It’s all very well and good going crazy over scented plants, but especially if you have a small plot, you don’t want to overwhelm the space.
“Lavender and Rose go very well together,” says Hall. “But what I think you need to do is have different scented plants that flower throughout the year, so you don’t have lots of things all at one time, particularly if you are in a very small courtyard garden.
“Because, in some cases, the fragrance can almost be overpowering if there isn’t any air to move it around.”
Where to get inspiration
Hall says the more gardens you get to see, the better.
“I was at RHS Garden Wisley and there was this wonderful scented jasmine that I didn’t know,” says Hall.
“It is actually quite a common one, called Devon Cream, and it actually produces more scent than the straight common jasmine.
“So I really recommend going to different gardens, not just for scented plants, but for generally looking how combinations of plants go together,” he says.
For Hall, a lot of his inspiration comes from the Mediterranean garden, “a lot of Mediterranean-type plants exude smells, not only from their flowers, but also through oils from the leaves.
“They’re very evocative, aren’t they?” he says.
“For me, when I walk through our Mediterranean garden here at Kew in the summer, the smells take me back to being somewhere warm in the evening, I just think it’s calming and peaceful.
“I think that’s what scent does for a lot of people. When you’re in the dark, you can’t really see the colour arrangements, but the scent is still there.”
Gardening With Scented Plants by Tony Hall is available to buy now.
