Summer's perfumes add to garden pleasure
One of the greatest joys in any garden, I think, is the soft perfume wafting in through an open window on a summer breeze, the scent of a newly mown lawn. The cool soft perfume of the roses in the early morning, and the myriad perfumes as you stroll through the garden in the evening soothe away all the cares and worries of the day. In her hook "Portrait Of A Garden" Kerry Carmen speaks of the peace and tranquility she enjoys wandering barefoot across the lawn late at night absorbing the scents and the sounds of her garden. This is something we can all enjoy, by planting in our
gardens some of the shrubs and plants that will delight us with their lovely perfumes from late winter through the spring and summer months. Chimonanthus Praecox, the lovely winter sweet, grows to three metres in height with very fragrant yellow and red flowers in winter. Plant it in rich soil in a sunny and sheltered position and water well in dry weather. The very popular Daphne Odora Leucanthe is a glorious shrub growing to llA metres in height with attractive pink and white heavily scented flowers in late winter. Plant in rich humus in a semi-shaded position. Daphne hates lime, and will. benefit from a feed of acid plant food iri spring and autumn. Mahonia Japonica is well worth including for its perfume. It seems to do quite well in any good average garden soil and the lovely sprays of clear yellow flowers are strongly perfumed. It has a bonus of brightly variegated foliage in the autumn. A rather sprawly prickly shrub, it needs clipping to retain a good shape. Boronia Megastigma, the Brown Boronia, prefers a spot in semi-shade. Flowers in the spring and has a beautiful perfume. Include in the shrubbery the lovely Philadelphus Virginale, the mock orange blossum. Its snow white flowers in the spring have a delightful perfume. The Syringa, the lilac family, have some lovely colours among the modern hybrids, and all with sweet perfume. Choisya Ternata is one of my favourites in this respect. It retains its glossy leaves all the winter, and twice a year produces a crop of lemon scented little flowers, This
will grow to quite a large dense shrub and will provide good shelter for some of the more delicate plants. The newgrowth in spring will get burnt by the frost, but after the frosts have gone I trim the shrub into shape with the hedge clippers. It soon puts on new growth and rewards me with a crop of flowers. It is inclined to sucker, but the young plants can be removed from the main plant quite easily by chopping through the connecting stem with a sharp spade or a knife when the new plant has formed roots of its own. One of the memories of my childhood is for the Jasminium, the summer flowering Jasmine, which grew rampant over the front door of the family home in England. I can still recall the scent drifting in through the open windows. Summer is the scent of the roses. I have heard it said so often that the modern roses are not so sweetly scented as their old-fashioned counterparts. I don't believe this
to be strictly true. Some of the 'old roses' have little or no scent at all, and some of the modern hybrids are beautifully perfumed — 'Fragrant Cloud', 'Fragrant Hour', 'Kronenburg', dear old 'Josephine Bruce' to name a few, and there are many others. Grow a border of the heavily and heavenly scented Clove Pinks. Nothing lovelier on a summer evening to walk down the garden path to be regaled with this delightful perfume. Add a bush of lavender, and one of rosemary, both with aromatic foliage as well as the flowers. Some of the herbs have delightful aromatic foliage. The scented leaved geraniums can be planted out from pots after the danger of frost has gone. Always in a damp shady corner of my garden is the Convalleria, the sweetly scented lily of the valley, and iast, but never least, the English bluebell.
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Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 17, 17 September 1985, Page 16
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692Summer's perfumes add to garden pleasure Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 17, 17 September 1985, Page 16
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