The garden’s beauty transcends the mundane, enchanting the senses with a kaleidoscope of colors, shapes, and fragrances.

Filling your garden with fragrant shrubs creates an elevated ambience, perfumed with the fresh, sweet and sometimes spicy scents of nature.

The compounding effect of color and scent

Shrubs are an undeniable source for voluminous, year-round color. But the best gardens create a feast for the senses—and the power of scent can be just as transformative as a dazzling collection of colorful flowers.

Whether your garden is a mixed border or a collection of pots, you can mix intoxicatingly scented shrubs with sensationally colored flowers. Better yet, look for shrubs that offer both.

Top five fragrant shrubs

Viburnum Korean Spice. There are several types of viburnums, each with their own growth habit, foliage, and blooms, but the Korean Spice variety takes the cake.

I recently purchased one at the nursery, and my car was bursting with a fresh, slightly spicy scent. I’ve never smelled anything like it—and wondered why I hadn’t bought one sooner.

These viburnums bloom in early spring, with charming clusters of red blooms that open to light pink, eventually fading to white.

Lilac. This is a classic garden shrub, radiating a universally-loved fragrance—one that is both sweet and floral. They produce clusters of pale purple or white flowers in mid-spring.

Be mindful of which varieties you choose—some can grow as high as 20ft!

Bloomerang, Dwarf Korean and Miss Kim are all varieties that stay relatively compact—perfect for a mixed border or container.

Mock orange. I first learned about mock oranges walking around my neighborhood. I was overcome by an intense, citrusy fragrance and followed it, like Odysseus to the lotus flower. I encountered a shrub about my height, flecked with winsome white flowers.

After some sleuthing (by which I mean, calling my mom), I discovered it was a Mock Orange. I bought one the very next day, and it’s produced those delicious, orange-scented blooms every year since.

The shrubs vary in both height and flower appearance. The Miniature Snowflake variety is a lovely compact option.

Shrub Rose. These beauties are a double force, appearing here, as well as our Top 5 Shrubs for Color list—and for good reason!

Roses are deeply fragrant—and present a variety of scent profiles: old rose (the classic), tea, myrrh, fruit and musk. There are so many options for sizes, colors and blooms, you will never be hard-pressed to find a well-suited rose for your summer garden.

Butterfly bush. Another name you may recognize from the colorful shrubs list—the wild and wonderful butterfly bush.

Like lilacs and viburnums, this shrub features big, fragrant clusters of tiny flowers—but with more variety and color. The scent of these flowers is that of pure honey (which the pollinators love), and the blooms will continue all throughout summer, into fall.

Honorable mention: Gardenia. The scent of gardenia is among the best, at once both sweet and zesty. It’s an honorable mention because it’s too cold to grow as a perennial shrub in my zone 6 garden, however I just got one to grow as an annual in a pot this summer.

If you live in zone 8-11, gardenias can be grown as gorgeously scented evergreen shrubs! Maybe I can bring mine inside to keep it alive through the winter, what do you think?

👩🏻‍🌾 Seeds I’m sowing

Direct sowing season has arrived at last. May 15th is the average last frost date for Pittsburgh—meaning we should be free to sow directly in the garden starting this weekend.

What will I start with, I wonder?

I think it will be a big batch of cosmos seeds!

🌸 Flower I’m admiring

There’s so much going on outside, but I’m super enthralled by what’s happening inside.

Back in Issue 02 I mentioned I’d be trying scented pelargoniums as houseplants this spring. They arrived a few weeks ago, and I can’t take my eyes (or nose) off of them.

The Attar of Roses in particular is so wildly fragrant that it perfumes a whole room. So thrilled!

🍄 What I’m inspired by

Roald Dahl’s daily routine. Here’s what it entails:

• Breakfast in bed while opening the post

• At 10:30am, a walk through the garden to his writing hut

• A break for lunch at 12:30—usually Norwegian prawns with a gin and tonic, followed by a chocolate bar plucked from a big red box

• An afternoon snooze

• Back to writing in the hut at 4pm, a flask of tea in hand

• A prompt return to the house at 6pm for dinner

I don’t know about you, but I’ll be working on implementing this schedule as soon as possible. ☕

I have at least one, if not more, of each of the fragrant shrubs on this list—and I’m still itching to collect more. This past weekend I picked up nine(!) new rose bushes, another Korean Spice Viburnum and several new lilacs! 😇 What’s on your fragrance wish-list? Reply and let me know!

xx

Courtney