The smell of disappointment

This is a picture of  one of my night scented stock, Matthiola longipetala. It is a ratty little weedy looking thing, which is okay. It is supposed to look like that. But those white flowers that open up every evening are supposed to be incredibly fragrant. Only mine aren't. I planted them in a little nook next to the porch so they could perfume summer evenings, but though the flowers open every evening, they have no scent to speak of. If I get down on my knees and shove my nose into them, I can just barely smell them -- but that is all! I'm so sad. Do mine just not smell? Can I just not smell them? Do they need something special in order to smell?

The best smelling rose in the world

Perhaps I should just say the best smelling rose my nose has ever encountered. Which is still saying something. I used to be minorly obsessed with roses (in my teens... I sort of grew out of it) and have spent a lot of time sniffing the over 11,000 rose bushes in the Columbus Ohio Park of Roses when I lived in that town. Sniffing through that collection, and every other collection of roses I have come across, nothing comes close to the scent of Madam Ernst Calvat.
Not only is her scent strong (when she is in full bloom, I can smell her easily several yards away at the other end of the garden) but it is marvelous and evocative. I showed a flower to a friend once, and after inhaling deeply, she said, "Wow... that really... takes you places, doesn't it?" Smells are always hard to describe, but to me it is a wild, exotic, smell. Not quite floral, not quite incense, completely marvelous.
If you don't know the good madam, here is what she looks like in my garden:

She's a hybrid perpetual, and like most hybrid perpetuals (indeed, like most roses) she is a gawky, rangy sort of shrub, inclined to get mildew. Which is why, if you look closely in the picture you can see strawberries growing at her feet, and onions in the background. Roses to me are for putting in vases, so I grow them with my other cut flowers out back with the vegetables.

Here she is looking as she should, in a vase, with some Phlox 'Chattahoochee' filling the house with her incredible scent.

I just wish you could smell it too, through your computer screen. It would set you dreaming.

My favorite tree (at least right now)

I'm a huge fan of American yellowwood (Cladrastis kentuckea). A US native with smooth silvery bark like a beach, lovely yellow fall color, and right now, this:

Big clusters of dangling, fragrant white flowers almost like a wisteria. Sadly, though, not everyone has the same experience with this tree. Mr. McGregor's Daughter just posted pictures of her tree, and they look pretty sad. I'm not sure what the difference is: She's in Northern Illinois, I'm in Central Michigan, both zone 5. Here the show tends to be this impressive every other year, but she says her's hasn't flower in 5 years! This particular tree is sheltered by a big building, but there are lots of them around campus, and they all look amazing. Any theories?

My columbine collection

Carol, over at May Dreams Gardens, has been talking about her columbines, which makes me want to talk about MY columbine.

I'm a big columbine (Aquilegia) fan for several reasons. They're easy and adaptable, have gorgeous intricate flowers,  and are one of the few groups of plants that can do the whole range of red, yellow, blue and everything in between including brown, (almost) black, and green. Most of all, though, I love their promiscuous, self-seeding ways.

Regular readers may be beginning to realize that I am sort of obsessed with breeding plants. With most plants, you have carefully pollinate, then collect and grow seeds to get hybrids. But with columbine, just plant two varieties next to each other, and they'll do all the work: bees and humming birds will carry the pollen, and they'll seed the hybrid offspring around without any help from you. So, each year, when a new crop of seedlings comes into bloom, you just get to look through them and pick your favorites to let seed next year.

My current population of columbine is a combination of three groups of plants:

Aquilegia 'Perfumed Garden' which is my favorite commercial strain of columbine -- large flowers in a wide range of colors with a strong, honeysuckle scent. (Photo from Plant World Seeds)

Aquilegia 'Oranges and Lemons' which is a lovely range of oranges, reds, and yellows and theoretically is supposed to bloom all summer, though I haven't seen much rebloom on them yet. (Photo from Plant World Seeds)

Aquilegia viridiflora which has, I think, the most lovely shape of any columbine in the world, and also has a perfectly wonderful fresh, almost herbal scent. (My partner thinks they smell like Irish spring soap.) (Photo from B and T World Seeds)

These three have all been messing about in a most promiscuous fashion, so this year I have some lovely and interesting hybrids between them:

This one is, I think, a cross between 'Perfumed Garden' and A. viridiflora. The color is a little washed out, but the SCENT! It combines the honeysuckle smell of 'Perfumed Garden' and the fresh, herbal smell of A. viridiflora to great effect and is so strong I notice it just walking past. I hope some of the next generation keeps the fragrance, but has brighter colors and more of the shape of A. viridiflora.

This one combines the color of 'Oranges and Lemons' with the shape and scent of A. viridiflora. This has got to be one of the most elegant columbine flowers I've ever see -- such a sophisticated combination of yellow and purple-red, and what a perfect shape! I hope this one messes about with its more fragrant half-sister above, so I can combine these colors and perfect form with an even stronger, more wonderful scent.

By the way: If you are interested in growing more interesting, fragrant columbine next year, DO check out the selection from Plant World Seeds. They have a mind-boggling array of columbines unlike anything I've seen anywhere else. They are a UK company, but they ship to the US, and are well worth your time.

Resolutions for the garden

For my 2010 garden, I have a few resolutions:

1. Experiment with scent in the garden. A resolution inspired by Louise Beebe Wilder's The Fragrant Path (my review). I'm used to thinking about designing my garden in terms of color, form, texture, etc, but designing for fragrance is new for me. So I'm going to do some exploring this year -- grow more fragrant plants, sniff about, and think about how they might go together to add another layer to my garden. Should be a fun project. It will also be fun trying to describe scents in a blog...

2. Plan for winter color. I talked about this one recently so I won't belabor the point, but it is now an official goal: next winter is going to be a lot livelier 'round these parts.

3. Add non-plant items to my garden. Currently, my garden is all plant, all the time, but this year, I want to add sculpture and such. I'm going to try making hypertufa balls following the instructions from Faire Garden, and maybe play with other home-made sculpture. And candles... I want candles in my garden. Since seeing Avatar, my mind is full of ideas on how to play with light in the garden at night, and the natural, flickering light of candles seems perfect.

4. Plant a HUGE cutting garden. I'm nuts about cut flowers, and have always had a cutting garden, but last year amid the chaos of moving to a new house I didn't get enough ground prepped to have room for both vegetables and cut flowers -- and I sided with vegetables. This year will be different: I'm doubling the size of my vegetable garden area, and devoting half of it to cut flowers.

What are your resolutions for Garden 2010?

Book Review: The Fragrant Path by Louise Beebe Wilder

I'm a huge Louise Beebe Wilder fan, so when I saw her The Fragrant Path in a used book store recently, I eagerly snatched it up.
If you've never read Louise Beebe Wilder, you should. She wrote back in the 20s and 30s, and though that makes her work nearly a hundred years old, her writing remains utterly fresh and relevant. She is, I think, my favorite gardener writer of all time.

The Fragrant Path is (duh) about fragrance in the garden. Like most gardeners, I've not given scent in the garden much thought. I like fragrant plants, but I've never designed with fragrance in mind like I do with color. As Wilder puts it: "We plan meticulously for color harmony and sequence of bloom, but who goes deliberately about planning for a succession of sweet scents during every week of the growing year?" ("...succession of sweet scents..." Love it!)

The answer to that rhetorical question soon becomes clear. Who plans the details of fragrance in the garden? Louise Beebe Wilder does. Throughout the book she describes groupings of fragrant plants she enjoys: "Honeysuckle and loose white rugosa rose make a delicious combination and possess a delicate poetic beauty." And those she feels clash: "I made the mistake once of putting a lily-of-the-valley bed beneath some lilac bushes. The season of the two strong scented flowers over-lapped and the result was unfortunate for they did not blend happily."

Describing scent in words is always difficult, but some of her passages recreate sensations of fragrance so vividly you almost can smell it as you read: "To sleep in a room beyond whose casement honeysuckle scrambles and to awake in the night to the exquisite fragrance that inspires the darkness is an experience of rare quality. Such things invade life's commonplace routine with an ecstatic pleasure."

But don't think this book is all purple prose and poetry -- she backs up that passage on honeysuckle with detailed descriptions of no less than 24 different species of honeysuckles. Inspiration for the garden, and the information you need to actually execute the ideas she gives you all in one book. 

I'm excited now to start exploring fragrance in a new way. I'm not sure I'm ready to start designing fragrance combinations, but I'm going to track down some of the plants she mentions, and spend next summer sniffing and thinking. I'm used to thinking about combining color and texture in my garden. From now on, I want my designs are going to be about color, texture, and aroma.