The Scented garden

To celebrate National Fragrance Week, Hazel Sillver looks at some of the best fragrant plants to incorporate into your garden for a scintillating scented summer

- Hazel Sillver

SCENT is one of the important sensory elements that makes a garden special. Just as a border feels lacking without the mellow hum of bees, so something seems missing without fragrance. In late spring it might come from a lilac or lily of the valley, and in summer it could be roses or lavender. Often the smell hits you when passing something in bloom or by getting close to aromatic foliage while working in the borders, but on warm, still days the stronger perfumes hang in the air, and all you need do to enjoy them is sit back on the patio and inhale.

Plants in perfumes

This year’s National Fragrance Week (21-27 March) is a celebration of scent by the perfume industry, and it’s remarkable to discover how many ingredients in perfumery hail from garden plants. Roses and Jasmine are grown for oil, of course, but it’s also extracted from hyacinths, narcissus, bay, angelica, rosemary and many more plants.

At Keyneston Mill Scented Gardens in Dorset, home to Parterre Fragrances, the bulk of the borders are composed of fragrant plants, many of which are used to produce the company’s perfumes.

Head gardener Rebecca Williams says: “My favourite scents are the citrusy scented-leaf pelargoniums, in particular P. ‘Graveolens’ and ‘Prince of Orange’. I’m also besotted with the smell of the chamomiles Chamaemelum nobile and Matricaria recutita. None of these plants is difficult to grow and working among them brings great pleasure.”