Emma Cooper

When I’m choosing plants for my kitchen garden I tend to concentrate on things that I want to eat, or unusual plants that I want to try and grow. This year Pete has been more involved in the garden and he had a slightly different take on things, adding plants that are useful and smell nice. He has added mints, lavender, rosemary, thyme and sages – aromatic plants that smell nice when you touch them but which rarely fill the garden with clouds of scent. In the winter we have a witch hazel that does just that.

Those of us who are not visually impaired tend to plant for colour and design, utility or wildlife value – scent is often an afterthought, a fortunate by-product of our choices. And so when I was offered the opportunity to review one of the Greenfingers Guides I chose one on a subject about which I know very little – Fragrant Plants.

The Greenfingers Guides are glossy paperbacks written by Lucy Summers, an award-winning garden designer. Fragrant Plants has a short introduction and then leaps right into the plants, with fragrant flowers divided by the season in which they flower. Each plant has a column headed with a photograph and containing everything you need to know to be able to grow it, including how easy it is and where the plant is best used. Many of the plants chosen have been awarded the RHS Award of Garden Merit, meaning that they are easy to find and should grow well in most gardens.

All of the plants have been chosen for their scents, something which is a little hard to showcase in a book, but some will also be familiar as useful plants to anyone who is into forest gardening – double check with a suitable reference book or PFAF if you spot one you think may also be edible.

Between ‘Spring’ and ‘Summer’ there are several pages on choosing and growing scented roses, which are a perennial favourite. And once you’re past ‘Winter’ you’ll find a section on aromatic plants – plants which don’t necessarily have scented flowers but which release a scent when touched or crushed. Many of these are culinary herbs, and are marked as such, but the entries here are shorter and there are fewer photographs.

The back of the book covers the basics of gardening and growing plants. It reminds us that flowers with pleasant smells are aiming to attract beneficial insects (bees, butterflies, beetles and moths) and notes that plants with unpleasant smells (which are not covered by the book) are attracting flies as pollinators. The topics covered include planning and sourcing plants, caring for them, hardiness, pest and disease problems and propagation.

Four pages at the back list plants that are useful in different settings and for different things – e.g. groundcovers, full shade or with flowers in particular colours. One omission seems to be a list of plants that release their scents in the evening, a topic of interest for gardeners who aren’t fortunate enough to be in their garden most days.

‘Fragrant Plants’ has added a new dimension to my thoughts about the garden, and I will endeavour to add more scented plants over time. It would be nice to be greeted by pleasant smells when I go out into the garden, rather than the ones arising from the malodorous deposits of the neighbourhood cats!