June, and the garden is at its most sensuous, inviting – no, imploring me – to look, touch and sniff. It is a wonderful month for smelling the garden. I do this first thing in the morning and again in the evening when everything is at its olfactory best.
Perfume was one of the first considerations when I started this little garden. The lavender bushes, I planted along the path to run my fingers through as I walked past, didn’t last long in my London clay, but the high hedges planted to trap the scent of wallflowers and the vanilla notes of sweet box (Sarcococca hookeriana) have worked as I had hoped. Wallflowers are the smell of my childhood; as sweet as the tin of Parma Violets my grandmother kept in her handbag, perfuming her lace handkerchief and purse. Their scent is an essential part of this space.
The perfume that plants so generously give to this garden starts in March, when I catch the first fleeting scent of Viburnum x bodnantense. I know her and her sugar-pink pompoms simply as ‘Dawn’. The soft, clove notes always take me by surprise, a reminder that even though the stems are bare, spring will soon be here. It is as if the garden is whispering: “Don’t worry, it won’t be long.”
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Field of Dreams - The naturalistic gem Hans Gieszen has created in former meadowlands near Utrecht in the Netherlands is the culmination of a lifelong passion
Ever since his mother gave him seeds as a small boy, gardening has been a passion for Hans Gieszen. He is completely self-taught, relying on garden visits and books for instruction, with one book in particular, Dream Plants for the Natural Garden by Henk Gerritsen and Piet Oudolf, influencing his style. “It was fascinating,” says Hans, remembering his first encounter with the book. “All those photos – pictures with mists and these tall and low plants and grasses. I realised I couldn’t do it in my small garden, but I kept dreaming and reading about it.”
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