Fragrance your garden with Pots of perfume

Fill your patio containers with some sweet-smelling plants and you can really enjoy the scent of summer! Hazel Sillver sniffs out the best combinations

- Hazel Sillver

SCENT plays a key role in the garden – and never more so than in the height of summer. On a warm day, or a balmy evening, there is nothing better than sitting with your feet up, reading the paper, surrounded by pots of perfumed plants. Roses, pinks, lavender and other aromatics all give off a delicious fragrance, and work well in containers.

Pots of fragrant plants can be placed either side of the front door or along paths, to greet you with a cloud of scent as you come and go. Or position them beneath open windows and their perfume will float into rooms. All you need is the right plants and a sheltered, sunny spot – the warmth will unleash the delicious aromas of their flowers and leaves, which will hang in the air.

The choice is ample. For classic cottage-garden scent many lavenders and compact roses (such as Rosa Roald Dahl and Fragrant Cloud) can be grown in pots. Either alone or combined with other scented specimens, they make lovely container plants.

Plants that trail and spread, such as prostrate rosemary and dwarf sweet peas, can be encouraged to tumble attractively over the sides of a large urn. And climbing plants like dwarf honeysuckle and semi-dwarf sweet peas can be coaxed up a wigwam, or a column of bamboo canes or hazel sticks plunged into a pot.

The night shift

Some scented plants release their fragrance after dark, so if you like to enjoy a drink or entertain on the patio on summer evenings, consider filling containers with the likes of jasmine, honeysuckle, lilies, tuberose and night-scented stocks. All will perfume the air at dusk, and once the sun has set white petals will appear to glow in the dark.