Plant fragrant, beautiful flowers such as petunias, phlox, eucalyptus, or peony for a perfume paradise!
There's nostalgia about plants. Remembering your childhood backyard or grandma’s flower pots and riotous plantings. The colors, the shapes, the scents. While not recreating the exact gardens, we can incorporate many of those elements with “old-fashioned” plants that are just as lovely today. And some are even better! Here are a few recommendations and Garden Plans based on the look and emotion you're trying to create.
A new twist on old favorites:
With a wave of new varieties every year, you can switch up those annuals season after season.
- Petunia - speaking of waves, with new introductions you’ll find an array of colors to mix in with every garden, container planting or hanging basket. Check out the Crazytunia series.
- Geranium - probably one of those plants we associate most with grandma! A newer variety, 'Boldly hot pink’, will dazzle.
- Marigold - bright oranges, yellows and reds stand out in any garden, and maybe protect those vegetable plants.
- Nasturtium - varying shades from yellow to apricot to red. Some with variegated foliage and all with a pepper taste. Also another great choice in your vegetable garden to deter pests. Hmmm, did grandma know something we don’t?
- Sweetpeas - many pastel shades. Richly fragrant, they grow on vines.
Don’t forget the perennials. Year after year, breeders are improving on flower, foliage and scent, along with varying heights.
- Hollyhock - a vertical old-fashioned flower with varieties anywhere from 6 ft. to 2 ft. tall. Colors vary with this biennial, meaning it bears flowers one season, sets seed the next and blooms the 2nd year and so on.
- Columbine - there is a native red/yellow variety and many other cultivars with shades of reds and blues.
- Echinacea aka Coneflower - grandma probably had the purple native. Oh but there are a multitude of choices now in color, height and flower shapes.
- Sedum - from rock garden creepers to the outstanding ‘Autumn Joy’, there are numerous choices. Sedum is a very easy growing plant that fits many spaces.
- Echinops - this globe flower comes in all shades of blue. Long lasting and hardy.
Echinacea ‘Pow Wow Berry’ and two other cultivars
Fragrance:
The smell of a garden is perhaps the best fragrance in the world. A garden wouldn't be complete without a few of these fragrant additions.
- Sweet alyssum - a mounded annual plant with small white flowers that delivers all summer. Try ‘Snow Princess’.
- Nicotiana - there are many choices of color and height but the old-fashioned annual can grow to 5 ft. Fragrance lasts all season.
- Oriental lilies - fragrant flowers begin to bloom in midsummer. These perennials tend to grow to 4 ft. ‘Stargazer’ is a very fragrant favorite.
- Phlox - these perennials vary widely in color and height. ‘David’ garden phlox is one your grandma likely had and is highly recommended blooming from early summer to early fall.
- Peony - oh so many choices, all long-lived and lovely. They bloom from late spring to early summer and are truly an old-fashioned favorite.
- Rose - again so many choices with varying degrees of scent. Breeding for specifics can sometimes take the fragrance out. ‘Applejack’, ‘Cuthbert Grant’ and ‘Winter Sunset’ are great options.
Be sure to plant these choices near a path or under a window so you can take full advantage of the soothing smell drifting on the breeze.
Achieving a native appearance
Native plants are usually defined as those plants that were growing naturally in an area before European settlement and they include all types of landscape plants--trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, ferns, groundcovers, and grasses.
- Integrate natives with nonnative, more contemporary landscape plants.
- Use native plants and grasses of which there are many!
- Plant with barberry shrubs, dogwood shrubs, Viburnum shrubs, Achillea 'The Pearl', Nepeta or Rudbeckias (both perennial and annual varieties) to create a lovely garden that is native in appearance and feeling.
Incorporating Interesting Trees and Shrubs
- Trees and shrubs offer beautiful foliage and winter interest.
- Think colorful berries or fun, funky evergreens like the one you might have used to hide behind as a child.
Ask our Gerten Experts for the best tree or shrub appropriate for the conditions at your home. Find more on Selecting a Tree here.
As you choose your plants this spring, consider all the emotion and nostalgia they can bring to your garden or landscape. Expand your palette by including plants that are colorful, fragrant, reminiscent, and most of all fun!
The experts at Gertens are always available to answer your questions!