Winter scent

Planting for winter scent will draw you back out into the garden, even on frosty mornings, says Camilla Phelps, as she looks at the best plants for winter fragrance

- Camilla Phelps

WHEN our gardens seem to be at their quietest, darkest, and least inviting, nature still has the power to tempt us outdoors with scent.

Who hasn’t been bewitched on a grey midwinter’s day by an intense perfume caught on the air while walking down a street or through a garden? Such a scent transports you for a moment to an exotic and warmer time, leaving you wondering where it could be coming from and what amazing flower could be producing such a fragrance.

Winter climbers

It could be traced to a brilliant golden mahonia, one of the bolder players, loved by bees, that make a great addition to larger borders. With many varieties to choose from, they bring heady fragrance, structural evergreen foliage, and the potential to prune into an attractive multi-stemmed form.

Evergreen winter climbers can also be a great source of the scent. There are several good clematis choices from C. ‘Christmas surprise’, with bell-shaped white flowers, to C. cirrhosa var. purpurascens ‘Freckles’ with purplish speckled blooms and later, Clematis armandii joins the party with a profusion of starry white blooms.

Other winter-flowering plants are more discreet. The scents might be as powerful as a rose in the height of summer, but you have to look hard for the source of the perfume. Few are more unobtrusive than the evergreen Christmas box, sarcococca, with tiny white blooms that produce an astonishing perfume.