The scent of spring

New varieties of our little native violet are helping to bring this Victorian favourite back into the garden, says John Hoyland

- John Hoyland

THAT which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet,’ wrote Francis Bacon in 1625, anticipating the affection that gene rations of gardeners would have for this modest native wildflower. Violets are tough, undemanding plants with flowers that signal the start of spring with a perfume as heady as high summer. Only recently have we lost interest in the sweet violet, Viola odorata, seduced away from its charms by bolder and brighter flowers.

The violet’s heyday was the end of the 19th century, when trains full of both cut flowers and potted plants would leave growers in Devon and Cornwall for London. It has been estimated that, in the 1890s, there were 400 violet sellers on the streets of central London. The main appeal of the flowers to the Victorians and Edwardians was, of course, their perfume, which could detract from the stench of city streets. The scent did not merely mask the smell: violet perfume contains a substance, ionone, that briefly anaesthetises the nose against other smells.

The pick of the bunch

Viola odorata ‘Diana Groves’

In 2004, an inaugural conference for violet enthusiasts was held in Toulouse, France, and this plant, a seedling with claret-coloured flowers raised at the Groves Nursery, won a gold medal. It’s a tough plant reputed to be very resistant to pests and diseases

Viola odorata ‘Mrs R Barton’