Dixon horticulturists Suzy Askew (left) and Kim Rucker enjoy the big fragrance of a Southern Peach rose.
A flower first captures our curiosity with its beauty — a visual symphony of color, texture, shape, and indescribable uniqueness. But magic truly happens when we inhale deeply to find our heads filled with a scent sweet enough to elicit swoons.
Alas, that magic is never a sure thing. Too many flowers are like pretty girls who lack the deep inner beauty that turns infatuation into love.
This may come as a surprise, but most flowers are naturally devoid of desirable fragrance. Others, like many modern roses, have lost their fragrance through modern hybridization practices that aim for disease resistance, abundant petals, and long stems over scent. Because the gene for fragrance is recessive, both plant parents must carry it to produce a sweet-smelling “child,” but even then, it can be elusive.
Nevertheless, you can bet on a wide selection of reliably fragrant, easy-to-grow plants that thrive in the Mid-South. Because flowers release their scents most intensely on hot and humid evenings, our climate is ideally suited to fragrant gardens. Perhaps we should all use our noses as well as our eyes to sniff out new plants.
This year horticulturists at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens added lots of aromatic plants including two dozen rose varieties in conjunction with the current gallery exhibit, “Scent and Symbolism: Perfumed Objects and Images,“ on display through July 2nd. The list includes several heirloom rose varieties such as Cecile Brunner, Duchesse de Brabant, and Madame Alfred Carriere. One expects these oldies to bring their perfume to the garden, but numerous new hybrids are included too, such as Belinda’s Dream, a medium-size disease-resistant shrub rose with “very double” pink blooms introduced in 1992, and several charming “cabbage” style roses from English hybridizer David Austin.
You’ll find these, and more, in the central bed of the cutting garden at the Dixon, which is now also adorned with an iron gazebo shaped like a perfume bottle, a nod to the importance of roses in perfume-making as well as the gallery exhibit.
Edgeworthia’s yellow flowers are doubly delightful because they are sweet-scented and they bloom as early as February.
In my mind, you can’t have a fra-grance garden without lavender’s clean fresh scent wafting through the air. The Mediterranean plant can be a challenge to grow because it needs super-well-drained sandy soil and will rot in our soggy clay.
If you plant it in a garden bed, place limestone pebbles around the base of the plant instead of bark mulches that hold too much fungi-inducing water at the vulnerable center of the plant.
Lavender also does well in containers filled with a light mix of soil and sand topped with limestone pebbles. Those pebbles reflect light and heat into the center of plant, warding off the development of fungal diseases. As with any container-grown plant, be sure to provide adequate water during long, hot dry spells.
The best lavender varieties for us seem to be Grosso, which is also used in perfumery, or Phenomenal, a new variety that is resistant to diseases, tolerant of extreme heat and humidity, and hardy through the winter.
With an indescribable fresh, clean scent, lavender’s essence seems almost virginal — the complete opposite of the tuberose, an intensely fragrant powerhouse that has been described as sexy, narcotic, carnal, and the “harlot of perfumery.” It earned that description because Victorians feared young girls might have spontaneous orgasms if they inhaled it. About 20 percent of modern-day perfumes contain the costly essential oil of tuberoses.
Tuberoses, which grow from bulbs, produce white waxy flowers on long stems in mid to late summer. For our climate, the variety with single flowers is more reliable than Pearl, which has more striking double flowers. Plant them about two inches deep in May for flowers in August. To lengthen the bloom time. plant half in May and the other half in late June.
The perfume released from just one or two cut stems in a vase will linger indoors for several days. Tuberoses, which are native to Mexico, usually don’t make it through our winters so many gardeners dig, lift, and store the bulbs in mesh bags for the winter.
Memphians can have fragrance in their garden for all seasons with these plants recommend by Suzy Askew, gardens education and volunteer coordinator at the Dixon:
Trees with scented flowers include magnolias like the gigantic Southern magnolia and its smaller cousins Little Gem, Teddy Bear, and Baby Grand; sweet bay magnolias that produce lemon-kissed flowers on small to medium-sized trees; and the American yellowwood, whose pendulous fragrant flowers resemble white wisteria.
Numerous shrubs bear scented flowers, including the winter bloomers such as witchhazel and edgeworthia, a shrub with fragrant yellow and white flowers that light up the winter woodland garden at the Dixon.
Camellias, which will bloom from late fall to early spring depending on the variety, have by and large lost their fragrance through hybridization. But it has been restored in some new cultivars like the pink Scentsation.
Because it is fragrant, Ayesha is a rarity among mophead hydrangeas.
Because the heady fragranceof gardenias evokes memories of young love for the not-so-young of us, we may linger outdoors to savor it even on the sultriest Southern nights when its scent is most intense.
My two August Beauty gardenia bushes were given to me a dozen or so years ago by Dorothy Anderson, an indefatigable 89-year-old who still digs and installs plants in her Southaven garden. Anderson likes to pamper her gardenias with annual applications of fertilizer, judicious pruning, and spraying of the whiteflies that suck the green out of their leaves.
Mine, which have been surviving mostly on their own, produce plenty of flowers, typically in May and then again in August, but I think I’ll give them a little boost with fertilizer this year. Fragrance evokes memories and that’s why my mother-in-law always gets a small nosegay of the first gardenias that bloom in my garden. One sniff and she’s transported back to her youth and the corsages her dates presented to her.
We don’t expect fragrance in tulips, but Ballerina, a late-season bloomer with bright tangerine lily-like flowers, is one a few dozen varieties that defy the norm.
Daffodils are more likely to be scented and I would say some, such as paperwhite narcissi, are downright stinky but others actually enjoy it. Popular fragrant daffodils include some you may already be growing, like Tahiti, Carlton, Ice Follies, Thalia, and Baby Moon.
Sniffing hydrangeas is generally not productive either but the summer blooming panicle varieties like Limelight and Little Lime have a sweet fragrance. Not so with oak leaf types or the vast majority of blue or pink mopheads and lacecaps.
Molineux, a yellow rose in the cutting garden at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, releases its fragrance most intensely in the evening.
Ayesha, my favorite mophead, not only delights gardeners with its distinctively cupped waxy florets, and I’ve read it also smells good. I confess I never noticed, but when it blooms this summer I’ll definitely give it a sniff.
I’ve been growing culinary herbs since the mid-1980s but only recently learned exactly how important their scent is to flavor, and you can, too. Try this. Snip a leaf of lemon balm, mint, basil, or other tasty herb. Pinch your nostrils closed and chew on the herb. You will not detect its flavor at all. As soon as you remove your fingers, though, the taste explodes in your mouth.
Aroma, it’s been said, is 90 percent of perceived flavor. No wonder food is tasteless when our noses are stuffed from a cold. So sometime soon, find a good smelling plant, cup a flower in your hand or gently crush a fragrant leaf. Inhale and exhale deeply until the scent is stored in your memory.
Christine Arpe Gang has been writing about gardening in Memphis for more than 30 years, primarily for The Commercial Appeal. She seeks out the best plants and growing techniques to share with her readers and use in her own garden.
