Guest post by Emira Mears
With summer in full swing most of my garden work these days is about maintaining: watering, weeding and reseeding the odd head of lettuce. For the past week or so these chores have been particularly lovely as a few of my scented flowers are in full bloom. Now many of my plants have scents of course — I can’t walk past my tomatoes without rubbing my hands along their lovely leaves, I’ve got many different lavender plants, herbs and my much cherished roses — but the ones that have sprung into bloom lately are the real scent heavy hitters. Casablanca lilies in particular, and a recently acquired budlea that doesn’t do too bad a job of smelling up the garden. I have to admit that scent isn’t really the first thing I pay attention to when picking flowers, herbs and veggies to plant. And in fact, the lilies that I’m so enjoying right now are not something I would normally buy and plant, but came as gift bulbs from a friendly neighbor up the way. And, while I still can’t say I go crazy over their visual addition to the garden, I will definitely plant them again. Their abundant scent really helps to transform me into the “gardening state of mind” as I’m out there taking care of details. Together with the feel of the dirt and the progress of all my leafy babies out there, I find my mind becoming occupied with my plants instead of the worries or thoughts of my day. And, while I’m definitely not the first to discover this whole scented-flower-thing, I’m becoming quite the champion of it. I think next year I’ll work on creating pockets of scent around the garden, and trying to ensure that I’ve got more fragrance throughout the year.
Before I leave this scent topic I do feel I need to afford special praise to my honeysuckle. The honeysuckle was among the very established plants that came with this garden and I fell in love with it instantly. And if its rambling green tendrils and gorgeous bursts of flower weren’t enough to recommend it, the evening scent of it as I wheel my bike past it on summer nights really is a dreamy delight.
Last summer all of these plants kind of took me by surprise in terms of how very much I fell in love with them. Not that I’ve been harbouring a life long hate-on for roses or anything, but they had just never really caught my eye in gardens in the past. I think it was that each of these different roses (and I’ve already reserved a book at the library to help me identify them, and figure out just what they need in the way of care) brought back childhood garden memories. Their various scents reminded me of the hot summer days that my best friend Kate and I used to try making “perfume” from flower petals mixed with water from the garden hose in 4L ice cream pails that were then set in the sun to cure. The look of the different flowers from each bush was of such a simple, but iconic beauty that I was pretty much charmed from the get go. I also really loved how old each bush clearly was (you could see the gnarled past branches trimmed down to allow for new growth), and imagined how many years they had been tended and loved by their previous owner (I’m such a sucker for things with history, whether its a history I embellish or one that has some actual legs, give me a “heritage” seed variety any day).
