If you are unfamiliar with the plant, and someone gave you a bee balm seedling to grow, its appearance might give you pause. Most of the year, the bee balm looks deceptively unremarkable. But from June through September, it produces blooms in striking scarlet clusters whose fragrance insinuates oregano, mint, and thyme.
Of all the pleasures that plants bring to a garden, none is more intangible – or as powerful – as a fragrance. And yet, as the bee balm yearly reminds us, the gift of redolence is rare and fleeting.
Growing a Fragrant Garden
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In this growing season’s frantic planting and preparation, consider scent in selecting your greenery. With a little planning, you can grow a range of fragrant plants, hardy or delicate, to transform your garden into a sweet-smelling paradise.
Below are 10 plants you will want to grow for a fragrant garden.
Honeysuckle
The honeysuckle may be the queen of flowering vines, twining languorously around arbors and archways, trellises, and tree trunks. The blooms fill the air with an intoxicating scent in the daytime and at night. To create a beautiful tableau of colors and fragrances, intermingle honeysuckle with other flowering vines like clematis, climbing hydrangea, and perennial peas.
Arabian Jasmine
The exotic Arabian jasmine is actually a native of Southeast Asia. Horticulturists prize its tiny, star-shaped, pure white blooms, which issue a soft, sparkly sweet floral aroma. Hawaiians use the blooms for leis. The Chinese use the dried flowers to scent jasmine teas. If you’re trying to coax a little tropical variety in your garden, grow some Arabian jasmine.
Catmint
Experienced gardeners know catmint for its easy-going nature. The plant will thrive under a variety of growing conditions, though it does prefer sunny and dry environments. White, blue, and purple flower spikes appear in early summer and continue to bloom until frost, releasing a spicy, minty, sage-like fragrance from the leaves, stems, and flowers at the slightest brush.
Peony
Peonies produce oversized flowers atop masses of silken green foliage. The hardy plant requires almost no care. In fact, with full sun and in good soil, many perennial peonies live over a hundred years without any extra effort from the gardener. Throughout, the peony’s blooms will add a distinctive sweet scent to garden paths, bridal bouquets, and indoor flower arrangements.
Milkweed
The milkweed is among the few food sources for Monarch butterfly caterpillars, but you might grow an entire bed solely for its appearance and fragrance. With five petals and five hoods, the milkweed’s flower can be white, yellow, green, purple, pink, orange, or red. Its fragrance is the embodiment of summer: spicy, sweet, and ripe with a lovely overtone of honey.
Lilac
The lilac might be the archetypal fragrant shrub of April: lovely in flower, but all too often rushed by the early heat. Most gardens are too small for a hedge of them, but some of the smaller varieties of lilac will work wonderfully in a shrub border. The blooms issue a deep, floral fragrance akin to rose but with a soft, tantalizing hint of vanilla.
Phlox
The garden phlox brings enduring midsummer color to the garden on tall, thick but dainty pillars of flowers. Some varieties are the easiest perennials you can grow. They establish quickly with full sun, and the creeping varieties spread a carpet of color for groundcover. The garden phlox’s bloom produces a fantastic, sugary fragrance reminiscent of vanilla-clove and honey.
Lavender
Over the years, the lavender has grown into a much-loved perennial in garden beds throughout the world. Choose varieties that will work for your climate and you’ll be rewarded with enduring blooms on elegantly mounding plants. The fragrance of lavender is rich and pleasantly boisterous: at once peppery, herbaceous, misty, smoky – and unmistakably green.
Butterfly Bush
The butterfly bush has become a mainstay in many American gardens. They’re easy to grow, bloom beautifully, and are utterly irresistible to butterflies. Starting in midsummer, they flower until frost, producing small blooms in an array of blushing colors. The flowers discharge a heady, honey-like fragrance that’s strongest at midday, luring droves of fluttering butterflies to the garden.
Witch Hazel
The witch hazel is an excellent answer to the wistful longing for bloom and fragrance in the dead of winter. During periods of mild winter weather, the witch hazel’s spidery flowers wriggle free from their buds like tiny, icy yellow flames along leafless branches. The crumpled yellow tufts release a delightful citrus fragrance that can sometimes last for weeks.
Incorporating Fragrance in Garden Design
If you want a garden that smells as good as it looks, include fragrant plants in designing your garden. Grow them in as many places as possible. Situate hyacinths beside your front door, milkweed beneath your bedroom window, and peonies in pots on your patio.
You can line the edges of pathways with sweet alyssum or lavender, plant fragrant catmint around a garden bench. Or surround your deck or patio with pots of freesia, sweet pea, and crinum.
Remember, too, that zones of fragrance differ not only by plant but also by time of day. Unless you are planting a whole field of honeysuckle and lilies, you have to locate your fragrant plants close to where you walk and sit.
