Scented Landscapes
The same patio can be a different place for breakfast, a siesta or a glass of wine in the evening
Planting in such a way as to have different scents throughout the day and night helps enhance the beauty of our favourite places to relax.
Signature Examples
Coming outside in the early morning to the scent of the almost tropical Nicotiana sylvestris and potted Datura alba which have been emanating all night is truly an enchanting way to start the day.
Many of us love the smell of a bushy wall of honeysuckle (the flowers of which are also prised as great medicine for inflammation and blood disorders in Chinese Medicine), which gives off its sweet odour day and night. Winter flowering Honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantassim is a good addition for the deeper times of the year.
Mostly giving off their perfume in the afternoon, cut Lilies are a favourite on any table. Better than that are rooted lily’s in the garden with their coconut-velvet like scent where one has to stop and bury their nose carefully inside! Lilium candidum, is one of the oldest Lilies in cultivation and has been found in Egyptian tombs dating over 3,000 years old!
At which point one may come to the Four O’Clocks, Mirabilis jalapa with their early evening perfume. Evening Primrose gives itself away with its name but is often overlooked. Opening up it’s flowers at dusk this is a gorgeous and easy to grow plant. And we can’t of course forget, to be held by the hand with Jasmine as she whisks us off our feet into the night.
Night Scented Glory
Open up a magical doorway with a night-scented garden
A night, or moon-garden has always been a special love of ours. Permeated by the perfume of these nocturnal beings we are transported to evocatively familiar and palpable new dimensions. Placing them under the bedroom window or in a basket by the back door will fill the house in the evening and throughout the night.
For outside we can surround the evening patio with these flowers and weave them through a pergola to drip down around us. Although frequented by butterflies by day, these plants are pollinated at night and loved by moths. Not needing colour to attract pollinators, many of these plants are white and light up the garden at night.
A Journey of Scents
Connect with the secret of the highest expression of the plant kingdom – the flowers and their perfume.
Mark completed a very successful four month project on our acre of garden. We warmly recommend him as a professional landscape artist with a fine sensitivity for all the needs of the natural world and the ecofriendly methods that he employs.
Christopher & Raphaela Cooper, Co-founders of the South Devon Steiner School