Music and perfume pack the most powerful punches when it comes to emotional hooks. Remember dancing under the stars on a jasmine-scented evening? If you hear that song and catch the same perfume on the breeze, you’re transported straight back in time. Rather than wait for chance, it’s easy to create your own happy-scented-memory bubble just by growing perfumed plants – on a window ledge, balcony, patio or in the soil. Here are 4 fragrant flower garden ideas to get you started: then just plant and take a deep breath….   

1. The one and only Perfume Princess. In the cooler months there’s no other flower that has the same intense perfume as a daphne. And of the daphne options you’ll find at the garden centre, no daphne compares with Daphne Perfume Princess™. There’s a snow white version, and a classic pink and both have the waxy, almost crystalline florets in larger-than-normal clusters. Daphne Perfume Princess is versatile too: being happy to grow in a container and stay relatively modest in size, or to grow into a very nice bushy shrub if planted directly into the soil. With this much flexibility it’s easy to position your daphne right where your nose can enjoy the perfume:  in a pot on the balcony; or planted in the garden right beside a welcoming garden bench.

2. Spring bulbs that catch our breath. Who doesn’t stop to put their nose into a pot of flowering bulbs in springtime. It’s super easy to plant your own to have on the balcony or even to bring indoors to sit on the table at lunchtime. In late winter, just pick a container, fill it a third full of free draining potting mix, then tuck your bulbs in and cover with the rest of the potting mix. Sit it out where it will get rain and sun, and before long you’ll spot little green spikes nudging upwards. Which bulbs do you choose? Perfumed ones of course, like the small narcissus aka jonquils. In yellow, cream, splashes of orange and soft pinks there are heaps to choose from. Or freesias, with their trumpets of scent that come in rainbow colours. Hyacinths are lovely and their fragrance is why people sit them on their kitchen windowsills in late winter. To see more options go online and search with ‘perfume’ and ‘bulbs’…

3. Fragrant Roses are brilliant. And probably the easiest, best performing perfumed rose to plant and grow these days is the Flower Carpet® Fragrant Shrub rose (known as the Showpiece Fragrant Shrub rose in the southern hemisphere and Canada). These roses don’t need expert pruning or spraying, they grow into a nice green bushy bush and produce fairytale, large, fragrant roses. There are five colours to choose from (with more on the way), and you can grow them in the ground or in a container. Again, a terrific option for balcony, patio or a whole easy-care rose garden full of them.

4. Wisteria wonderland. If you want to create a springtime scented show-stopper moment, nothing beats wisteria. Purple (over white) packs the most fragrance, and you can train it so that the flower racemes dangle just overhead in a scented cloud. Look around your place and plan where you’ll train it as the vine grows. Up and over the back door; over a pergola to shade the patio; along the balcony’s balustrade so that you’ll be wrapped in a shawl of perfume and be screened from passers-by.