THE FRAGRANCE OF MEMORIES

By LADYBUG

Several years ago, I was out digging and dividing my plants when my neighbour Anne hauled me inside saying she had to show me something.

She ignored my protests about dirty shoes – which I left at the door – and muddy paws, as she led the way to a room upstairs.

She took me to a large window overlooking our yards and pointed.

To a view of my garden. Which was, on that day, bursting with the exuberance of spring blooms.

“Every day, we wake up to this, thank you!” she said, and gave me a hug.

A garden is a sensory delight in more ways than one can count.

While one can glory in the joyous burst of colour come spring, something one can enjoy from indoors, looking out with a mug of chai  in our hands, or admire in a neighbour’s garden, walking or even driving by, there’s also the fragrance that wraps itself around you when you step into a garden.

Another friend who visits often, a young woman, always pauses to breathe in the scented air before entering our home.

“I love coming here, it’s like everything is hushed,” she says.

And I recall coming to a standstill on entering a garden during a garden tour. That fragrance, it was just like jasmine! But jasmine, here, in a Canadian garden? I followed my nose to a tree that was loaded with delicate blooms with that unmistakable fragrance and learnt it was a mock orange from the owner of the home, a master gardener.

In my garden, it’s the hyacinths that herald spring. They are soon followed by lilies of the valley, and then in quick succession, lilacs, peonies and iris in May-June. Honeysuckle, my old roses – the new ones are hardy and disease and bug-resistant, but the fragrance seems to have been lost – lavender...

I bring in a few small sprigs of one and a single bloom of another, and they fill my rooms with their heady fragrance.

The Fragrant Flower Garden is about just such spaces as the authors guide readers on how to create a feast for the nose as well as the eyes.

“Including scented plants in your garden creates a sense of magic and wonder, as their fragrances evoke memories, lift your spirits, soothe your nerves, surprise and delight visitors, and elevate your garden to a space of heavenly bliss,” write Stefani Bittner and Alethea Harampolis in their introduction.

Their expert tips provide a year’s worth of flowers, foliage and fragrance with trees, shrubs, perennials and vines. From which you can then reap the benefits through DIY projects such as floral arrangements, perfumes, tub soaks and tinctures.

Keeping in mind visual appeal, the plants are grouped according to colour palettes such as dusky, bright, silver/white, and so on.

I am delighted to find many of my favourite plants listed: Alyssum, bee balm, butterfly bush, climbing roses, dianthus, mint, phlox, sweet woodruff, wisteria, yarrow. I love that they include tulsi (basil).

Some are tropicals like jasmine, passion flower and champaka, that I have in pots that over-winter indoors.

But also so many that I now have on my list of must-haves: Anise hyssop, chocolate cosmos...

There’s even a section on “bad-smelling plants – to some”.

These include, not surprisingly, paperwhites. But also peonies. And then I remember my neighbour and gardening guru saying they reminded her of a funeral parlour.

She had, nevertheless, carried divisions of old peonies from her previous home.

The ones she shared with me have moved to our new home – and I happen to love their fragrance!

And every time they bloom, I remember and miss Dorothy.

Among sensible tips, there’s this:

“Don’t eat what you step on!

“Don’t harvest low-growing plants for eating or making home fragrance.  These plants are often trodden upon by soiled shoes and animals, and those that edge driveways or sidewalks may have been used by neighbours’ pets.”