Weekly Garden Tip

August 13, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

When you’re doing landscaping always include some fragrant flowers to spice up your outside environment. Fortunately in our area we have dozens of types of flowers that provide pleasant fragrances and these range from bedding plants to shrubs and even large trees. Many garden centers have examples of fragrant plants year round so you can’t say that you can’t find these easily.

Also if you live in an apartment or condominium where you don’t have outside growing areas, many fragrant plants are ideal for container culture and in fact probably are more used for that by many people than outside plantings.

A good example would be gardenia. Gardenias have a large white multi petaled flower from late spring to early summer and occasionally a second blooming in the fall.

If you want year round fragrance it’s hard to beat roses and these come in a variety of types, vine type and miniature types which are ideal for small containers.

Jasmine is another favorite that has white flowers in a variety of sizes depending on the type and these bloom off and on throughout the year with a very strong agreeable fragrance.

Some plants have fragrance at specific times of the day and the night blooming jasmine is a good example. This has tiny yellowish flowers in large clusters and blooms faithfully about every 4 to 6 weeks throughout the year. Flowers are not fragrant until sundown and are fragrant all night and then lose their fragrance the next morning when the sun rises. This can be used as a container plant, too, if you want fragrance on a porch or patio.

Even bulbs have fragrances and popular lilies such as the crinum lily have large fragrant flowers in either white or pink throughout the year and these make very attractive landscape plants and can also be grown in large containers.

Vines also have fragrance and a popular one is the confederate jasmine which blooms from late spring until early summer with clusters of one inch white flowers. The Stephanotis is another popular white flowered vine with heavy textured flowers off and on throughout much of the year and it’s commonly used in bridal bouquets for weddings.

If you want more information about fragrant plants, contact the Palm Beach County Extension office for some good suggestions. Dial 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.