There is nothing that makes me feel more blessed than blooming clove currants or vining honeysuckle because of the wonderful perfumed blooms! There are a large group of these flowers now as shown at this link https://growbeautifully.monrovia.com/sweetly-scented-shrubs-zones-4-7/. Some Gardenia are now hardy down to 6b which is so very close to being able to grow here in 6a i suspect within 5 years a 6a variety will be available. By then we will likely have gmo banana and oranges as well and truly oranges are one of the best smelling blooms ive encountered. What plants do you grow or have you seen that smell good? Wish i could always have soomething growing in the yard that smells nice. I think in the future as this becomes a bigger thing there will be lots of demand for these plants.
Sweet autumn clematis is probably my #2 favorite plant for fragrance (clove currant being #1, though the clematis wins for quantity)
Autumn Olive is supposed to be fragrant, but I almost have to stick my nose in to smell it.
Of cours, no fragrant spring garden is complete without hyacinths.
Lonicera fragrantissima (winter blooming honeysuckle) isn’t as fragrant as the hype led me to believe, but it has been becoming more fragrant as the years pass (mine is about 6-7 years old)
Philadelphus (mock orange) is another fragrant shrub and it comes in a number of interesting forms.
Scott
@Chills Some honeysuckle seems to not have a scent like the wild bush form. My vining honeysuckle is extremely fragrant. Autumn olive has a strong scent here because i have 25 bushes but its not what i consider a really nice smell. Certain plums i grow have a strong intoxicating fragrance as well. Did not realize they have clematis hardy to zone 4 so im looking forward to trying those. Hyacinths and mock orange sound like great choices.
Pluots have an amazing fragrance when in bloom. Even better I think than citrus. I’m going to plant more of both when I reorganize the greenhouse.
The first thing to bloom in my yard is tete a tete daffodils/jonquils. They perfume the entire yard. The rest of my yard is usually kind of ugly and muddy that time of year. I appreciate everything about them, from their brightening effect to the lovely scent that floats around on the breeze.
I wish I could grow scented old roses here, but it’s just too difficult. I don’t want to invite more JBs than I already have.
The only other thing that I grow that is nicely scented is flowering tobacco. I’m looking into getting a Jasmine variety for indoors. If anyone has a suggestion I’d gladly take it. Or maybe I should go with gardenia. Geez you guys are always bringing up something new and interesting that I need to get!
a must-have if you enjoy fragrant flowers. To me the scent is not particularly sharp nor cloying even when in large numbers. Has this creamy sweet perfume to it. What vanilla ice cream is to your taste buds, it is gardenia blossoms to your olfactory nerve-endings.
calamondin blossoms practically has the same perfume-profile as orange blossoms in quality and intensity. Something you’ve got to try since it is way more cold-hardy than orange. It is also dwarfish(if grown as an air-layer or if grown as a graft using mature budwood), and also the most tolerant of low-light conditions, grown by south facing window sill. Possible to grow orange trees indoors but will not bear flowers and will get leggy, calamondins will continue to have relatively short internodes and will bear flowers even in low-light conditions. Since the internodes are short, you’ll have more blossoms per unit length of stem.
What are the differences between oranges and calamondins? Are calamondins also different from mandarins? I’m new to citrus, I could go google it if you don’t want to get into it.
did you mean to say night jessamine? Absolute must-have but needs way more warmth, humidity, and sunshine than gardenia. People like to snort cocaine, i prefer to snort jessamine, lol It has the highest brix of fragrances. Pure sugar!
calamondins are like tiny mandarins/tangerines, but fruits are more zesty instead of sweet, so used like lemons or limes. Calamondins are more cold-hardy than mandarins, i actually think it is only second to trifoliates, and an equal of kumquats in cold-tolerance
i posted photos of regular calamondin and variegated calamondin below. These have endured 20F winters outdoors and unprotected. The variegated calamondin seems to be tougher as it does not drop its fruits or foliage
I don’t have a sun room so it sounds like gardenia would be the way to go!
I was just looking at pictures of night blooming jasmine, which I had growing outside last year, and night jessamine, also called jasmine and nicotania on some websites. They look very similar! Are they the same? I could have brought my plant inside in the fall, if that was the case! I was thinking it was an annual.
people call it ‘night blooming jasmine’ as well, but probably better to call it night blooming jessamine, since jasmine denotes an unrelated species(jasminum, the true jasmine).
like true jasmines, the night jessamine is a perennial, and like some jasmines, jessamine can be propagated via cuttings so easily. Jasmines seem to be more sturdy to cold and low-light conditions compared to jessamine.
Mock Orange smells great when it blooms. Also Goumi (related to Autumn Olive) smells wonderful, even though the blooms are quite small.
oh, and how i can i forget? Many jujubes also have fragrant blossoms. And they will survive -10F, or even -20F, just as they will flourish in 110 F or 120F!
Li, honey jar, sherwood, sihong, sugarcane, silverhill seem to have more intense perfumes. The scent is enhanced when growing in an enclosed courtyard.
gardenias actually do better than most other fragrant species in low-light conditions. Speaking of low-light conditions and vanilla, you could also try brassavolas/brassolaeliocattleyas if you have the energy and will to grow orchids. Vanilla itself is an orchid with fragrant flowers, and the scent of cattleya hybrids smell quite similar to tincture of vanilla! Some dendrobiums also smell so good. The trick with orchids and gardenias is to give them as much light, just at a level below their scorching thresholds.
A note on pollination, when some are in bloom at the same time, the bees will stay mostly at the citrus plants and ignore the fluot or plum trees in my yard. I may have to try hand pollinating this year if it happens again. They all smell wonderful.
Clark, thanks for starting this thread. I love fragrant flowers and have collected many indoor fragrant bloom plants.
In zone 5，there are not too many choices，but my Korean Spice Viburnum grows well and has nice clove scent. Another bush outside that have pleasant scent is abelia.
I used to grow many fragrant roses while living in zone 6b.
Now in zone 12b, these are my favorites:
Jasminum sambac ‘Grand Duke of Tuscany’, also known as Arabian Jasmine, Michelia alba, and Michelia champaca.
I also like the pummelo blooms, they have very heavenly scented.
I have both Jesmines indoor and had michelia xx but died. Michelia alba is my favorit flower but not very easy to grow in pot
Daphne is probably my favourite smelling flower. Lilly of the valley is also pretty amazing. We don’t see many of either of them around here.
My michelia alba is hugh. The diameter of the trunk is probably close to 12 in. It was about 25 ft tall before I had it cut down to 5 ft. above the ground this Summer.
The first time I saw this tree in the US was at a botanic garden in Glencoe, IL. more than 15 yrs ago. I was so happy to see the tree and smelled the flowers. It reminds me of my younger years.