Fair, fragrant & for your garden

Of all the senses a garden can engage one with, smell is the most mesmerising one. With just a waft of fragrance, the mind can go to another realm, to a time and place that may hold a nostalgic memory or a world of dreams. Even with closed eyes, the vividness some fragrances can evoke is enchanting. Its charm can be very potent and personal –perfume to one, while unbearable to another. Luckily, nature holds a wide range of flowers for us to pick our favourites from. Here go a few easy-to-grow flowers for your home:

Fairest of them all
The exquisitely fragrant sambac or Arabian jasmine, flowers during the hotter seasons. Known by many names, jasmine is integral to the Indian culture. Grow jasmine in complete sunlight as loose border, bedding plant or in pots. Watering must be restricted to roots. Water contact makes flowers turn black before falling off, whereas moisture encourages infection. To encourage flowering, remove some leaves. Trim the branches after flowering. Keeping plants in check will always help them grow better.

It is true that no one can ignore the headily fragrant day or night blooming
jasmines, commonly known as chameli. During winters, the plant can be pruned to encourage new growth that will set buds for summer. Before summer, addition of
manure brings out good flowers.

Cestrum nocturnum or lady of the night, is a night-blooming jasmine shrub, with a tendency to climb. It bears inconspicuous, small and greenish flower in bunches. It is drought-resistant, can be trained as trellis cover, screen or tall border.

Day jasmine or Cestrum diurnum, blooms during the day. It bears white fragrant flowers. Prune it after flowering. If you do not prune it regularly, it may start looking like wild, uncultivated growth.

If you are looking for a pastel-coloured, sweet-smelling, fast-growing something that can double up as a shed, pick the Rangoon creeper – Quisqualis indica. It is a shrub that climbs anything that comes in the way. It blooms throughout the year, emitting a sweet smell. The white-coloured flowers open at night, but turn pink before falling off in the mornings. It definitely needs a strong structure to grow on. In rich soil, the growth may get unmanageable and therefore must be cut back during the dry season.

Intoxicating and exotic is the creamy white, double-petalled Gardenia. A pot-grown plant or as a shrub in the ground, allow it to fill the evenings with its captivating magic. It requires complete sunlight, uniform moderate humidity and acidic soil. It does not respond well to wet leaves and humidity variations will cause the bud to droop. It has a long flowering period and the flowers last for days. Prune it during early spring to keep it at a convenient size and allow the summer buds to set.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for a quick fragrant frame around a window, which will also fill warm days with a sweet smell, pick the white-coloured flowering  Clematis armandii. A lovely, fast-growing, light-weight vine, that blooms profusely starting from spring, until autumn, its white flowers come in bunches. It does well in pots, too. Train it along arbours as it readily entwines around whichever direction support is available. When volume gets too much, cut back till one foot and it will soon spring to growth.

Pleasing hues
A tree that holds a special place in Indian mythology is the parijata or harsingar. It blooms at night, is cream and orange coloured, with fragrant flowers, which drop before mornings. Heavy flower-bearing trees can lay a carpet of flowers by the morning. Picking up those flowers is a blissful way to start the morning. It can be grown as a large shrub or trained as a small tree. Well-drained soil and regular feeding will encourage blooming.
A very hardy, profusely flowering

garden’s boon is lantana. Poor soil, full sun, low water – this one fits the bill. The trailing type lantana has a mild fragrance that is best appreciated in expanses. Besides the ease to grow and its fragrance, the white, pink, yellow, purplish blue flowers attract hordes of butterflies, especially during spring. It’s a very useful plant for land-scaping, as bedding or ground cover. When flowering declines and it starts to appear scraggly, give it a trim.
A great-looking, slow-growing tree with large fragrant flowers is frangipani –  temple flower or plumeria, which comes in many colours, but is not very fragrant. The flowers with creamy white petals and yellow centres alone bear the loveliest of the fragrances. This slow grower does fine in large pots. Give it ample sunlight and well-drained soil with regular nourishment. It can be easily propagated by cutting. But after planting, it usually takes at least three years before it flowers.

Perennial pleasures
A very humble yet delightfully fragrant shrub that can fill the evenings with its colour-changing flowers is yesterday, today and tomorrow – Brunfelsia. The large-sized flower blooms almost throughout the year and lasts three days, presenting a different colour on each day, from purple to lavender to white. Keep it trimmed to as low as four feet or allow it to grow into a shrub upto seven feet. Morning sunlight is a must for these. It’s not fussy about the soil and should be watered after some soil drying. Buds set on new growth,  so some trimming helps.

An attraction for the butterflies is the Honeysuckle – a hardy, evergreen,  twining shrub, which can be used as ground cover and can also be trained into shapes. It bears white fragrant flowers in the evening, which on new growth, fade into yellow. It grows well on arches or trellis. Keep trimming it to encourage fresh growth and less woody skeleton, which adds mass, but not flowers. For hedge or screen that spreads a citrusy fragrance, grow kamini – Murraya panniculata – delicate and refreshingly fragrant white flowers, which bloom through good part of year. The kind of soil doesn’t matter, but it requires sunlight.

With such a wide range to choose from, there is at least one that’ll work for you.
Discover and enjoy.