Winter combines the earthy base notes of petrichor and muddy puddles with comforting top notes of gardenia, vanilla, honey, jasmine, and citrus.

Everyone loves a pop of winter colour. While you can’t beat bright red poppies, popping pink primulas, and citrus yellow pansies as a winter pick-me-up, we think adding winter scents to your garden is just as important to lift the spirits.
 
The smell of winter in the garden fills our hearts with winter’s song, a lilting melody about the promise of spring. It’s a powerful, head-to-toe experience, both earthy and fruity all at once, and one you can bring into the home as a reminder of warmer days to come. 

Daphne

The timeless Daphne odora sometimes gets a bad rep for being finicky and old fashioned. For most of the year, daphne is quite unobtrusive in the garden, but come mid- to late-winter, it’s true colours begin to take shape in the form of white and pink star-shaped clusters. The smell of daphne blossoms are nothing short of joyful, especially when carried on the slightest hint of a breeze on a still winter’s afternoon.

Daphnes are lovely as a cut flower in a short vase by the front door, where its smell can permeate through the home and linger for weeks.

Traditional daphnes prefer a shady and moist position that receives morning sun. They do well paired with other shade loving plants, such as hellebores and Carex oshimensis. Daphne hybrids ‘Eternal Fragrance’ and ‘Spring Pink Eternal Fragrance’ (Daphne x transatlantica) are happy in full sun and can withstand bouts of drought.

Luculia

Luculia gratissima is both a visual and sensory show-stopper. It’s glossy green foliage provides year-long interest and texture to the garden, and come late-autumn and early-winter, clusters of highly fragrant pink flowers form at the end of stems. Luculia will flower through winter, providing the garden with much needed colour and perfume, which is compared to jasmine and wild honey.

Flowers do well added to posies, albeit for a short time. The best way to enjoy luculia is to position it in a part of the garden that you will frequent in winter, such as a semi-shaded patio or next to a clothesline (it makes doing the laundry a more enjoyable activity).

Not unlike daphnes, luculias do not like their roots disturbed. Place them in a part-shade position where it will receive dappled light, away from wind, frost, and hot afternoon sun.

Rhododendron

There’s something deeply atmospheric about a mature rhododendron thicket, like a secret grove in a fairytale. They conjure images of misty gardens, ancient follies, and forests that hum with quiet mystery. Although not known for their fragrance, there are some exceptions, such as ‘Floral Dance‘ and ‘Kallista‘.

Both varieties will bloom towards the end of winter and early spring, flowering through September and October. They do well as cut flowers in a vase and will last up to a week.

‘Floral Dance’ features funnels of white flowers with pink frilly tips, while ‘Kallista’ is almost pure white with yellow throats.

Daffodil

The humble daffodil is an unpretentious emblem of hope and renewal. It is the first to trumpet the start of spring. If sunshine had a smell, it would smell of daffodils. They add cheer to the garden, their playful petals seeming to smile, and they are left alone by wildlife, making them an easy to care for garden addition.

Daffodils are also generous, providing countless blooms to add to vases around the home. Be sure to let them sit in a water for a few minutes prior to adding them to vase with other flowers, as they release a sap that can shorten the life of other blooms.

Daffodils do well in full sun and any type of weather, so long as the soil is free draining. We love author and garden guru Jennifer Stackhouse’s tip of planting daffodils with daylilies. Once daffodils begin to down, the strappy foliage of summertime daylilies will camouflage their otherwise scraggly and unkempt leaves.

Sweet Box

Sarcococca confusa or sweet box is a somewhat modest and out-of-the-box addition to the garden. It does well as a low hedge for the shadiest part of the garden and provides a lush backdrop for plecthranthus, hostas, and pieris.

Sweet box is notoriously slow growing, but once established, its dark, glossy emerald leaves creates an inviting ambience. In winter, tiny cream flowers fill the garden with hints of gardenia and vanilla. Flowers are followed by little berries, which attract birds to the garden.

Once established, sweet box is frost and drought hardy, requiring little to no maintenance. Place them in semi-shade to full-shade positions in the garden and forget them for a while, until you smell the sweet scent of vanilla.

Wintersweet

Chimomanthus praecox is a multi-stemmed deciduous shrub with green leaves that add height to the garden for most of the year. Its leaves turn butter yellow in autumn, before falling. Waxy yellow flowers then form in winter, providing a burst of sunshine in grey gardens as well as the lingering musky scent of allspice.

‘As a cut flower, wintersweet does well in a large vase where the structure of its branches can be admired while the flowers continue to open in succession over a long period.

Lisa Ellis and Teena Crawford (authors of Plantology) call wintersweet, “a great building block for a garden,” and suggest that it, “should be grown more often for its magnificent floral display in winter.”

Come in to the Nursery and talk to one of our friendly garden experts today!