Gold Coast Gardener

August 6, 2006

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

When you’re out in the landscape resting or sitting on your back porch or screened enclosure often times you like to enjoy fragrances of your garden. Many of our plants used have fragrances that are very pleasing and if you choose carefully in your landscape, you can plant enough fragrant plants that you can have a nice aroma year round.

Some types of fragrant plants are seasonal, while other blooms nearly all the time. One of the examples of fragrant flowers that bloom year round are roses which is our national flower. Roses come in hundreds of colors and can be grown as bushes, vines, or the miniature types can be grown as container plants inside the home or in a screen room.

Some of our fragrant plants in the outside landscape also can get rather large and some of our flowering trees have flowers that have a nice fragrance. Frangipani or plumeria can grow to over 35 feet and their fragrant blooms are often used for making leis for tropical theme parties.

Seasonal flowers that are well appreciated that have nice fragrances include gardenia. This spring bloomer starts in late March and blooms until early summer and the large white multi-petaled flowers can also be picked and taken indoors to enjoy their fragrance inside the home if you have an outside planted bush.

Some fragrant flowers are more fragrant at night and the night blooming jasmine is a common example. This blooms every 4 to 6 weeks throughout the year and the tiny clusters of greenish-yellow flowers are fragrant only during the evening hours stopping their fragrance when the sun rises the next morning.

Some vines also have fragrant blooms and a good example would be Confederate jasmine. This spring to early summer bloomer forms a very attractive dark green leafed vine for any fence or trellis and it’s one-inch fragrant flowers are produced in abundance from mid March until nearly June.

Many types of jasmine also are well appreciated for their fragrant flowers and these bloom off and on throughout the year and come in a number of varieties.

Even bulb plants such as crinum lilies have stalks of fragrant white or pink flowers throughout the year and these can be used as outside landscape plants or grown in a small container.

If you’d like to see examples of fragrant plants for the landscape, visit the Mounts Botanical Garden at 531 North Military Trail in West Palm Beach and look at the examples they have planted. You can also call the Palm Beach County Extension office for free advice any time during normal business hours. Dial 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.