GV Gardeners: Making scents of the garden

Selection of landscape plants is often based on their appearance, low water usage, flowering habits, or amount of maintenance.

Even an interesting garden full of form, color and texture is incomplete without plants that add the sensation of scent.

It is delightful to move around the yard and variously sniff mint, anise, bubble gum, cloves, vanilla, chocolate, sage, or even turpentine and creosote. Such an eclectic mix, and all originating from plant parts!

Defining a pleasant aroma is very subjective, so it may take some leaf-crushing and sniffing around to find that which appeals to you.

There are many aroma-rich plants that thrive in our desert environment. Don’t expect to like them all.

Aromatic plants along a walk or path allows the fragrance to be released when brushed against. The same is true near the front door to greet guests.

Scented plants or shrubs adjacent to the pool or patio allow sweet aromas to drift through the air while entertaining. Certain plants emit their fragrances from their foliage.

Among these are any of the many different scented geraniums, oregano, mints, tarragon, or various sages.

A small native shrub with strongly scented leaves is the Mount Lemmon marigold (Tagetes lemmonii).

This is a plant one either loves or hates, almost entirely based on its smell.

For sweetly aromatic flowers, there are chocolate flowers, aloysia, butterfly bush, and everyone’s favorite, roses.

To provide a welcoming entrance, one may cover an arched trellis with vines of jasmine, hardenbergia, or climbing roses.

Containers filled with fragrant herbs provide patio aromatherapy.

For example, lavender, lemongrass, lemon verbena, oregano, or catmint may appeal.

And again, you cannot top old-fashioned scented geraniums such as apple, chocolate, pineapple, lemon, rose, and citrus among others. A good annual for winter is stock.

It comes in several colors, stays a manageable size for containers, and has an interesting pungent aroma much like cloves.

Many trees can add a deep sweetness to the air when in bloom. Among some of the best are any citrus, Texas ebony, sweet acacia, and Texas mountain laurel.

The latter opens up the debate of whether its flowers smell more like bubble gum or grape Kool-Aid.

These trees all make springtime like stepping into a candy store.

Pine, cypress, and the other needled evergreens are sweet-scented and can bring up a lot of memories from our youth, an enjoyable camping trip, or a late evening drive through higher altitudes.

These trees have aromatic foliage.

A few bushes have rather unusual odors.

The desert is full of creosote bushes which after a rain give off a clean, unique smell.

Wormwood, also called artemisia, is another shrub with its own distinctive scent, often defined as “medicinal.”

Our native turpentine bush (Ericameria laricifolia) has foliage that smells just like one would expect.

Some folks find the strong, pungent scent offensive.

At the Arid Garden, off Camino Encanto, there are several large bee bushes (Aloysia wrightii) covered all summer in small vanilla-scented flowers.

Just down the path are two woolly butterfly bushes (Buddleia marrubiifolia) full of clove-scented orange-globe flowers.

When the air is still, this combination creates a soft “kitchen” aroma throughout the garden. Close your eyes and your mouth will water!

To get fragrance from both the flowers and the foliage, select from Chaparral sage, Mexican tarragon, Mount Lemmon marigold, myrtle, or desert lavender.

For the cactus purist, there is the heavenly scented Arizona Queen of the Night, better known as the night-blooming cereus.

As shown, there are many aroma-rich plants that thrive in our desert.

After living among them and caring for them, you will smell good, too!

So the next time you choose plants for the landscape, remember to add the dimension of aroma. It really makes scents!

Mary Kidnocker is a Master Gardener who writes frequently about the subject from a local perspective. Her columns are featured each Sunday.