Make Your Garden a Fragrant Paradise With These Flowers

 

Smart gardening means doing our best to reduce our footprint in today’s pollution and improve the health of our family and our planet. This is why including herbs and vegetables in your garden is very important. But this doesn’t mean we must sacrifice any beauty and fragrance. In fact, perfumed plants can encourage beneficial insects to the garden and improve pollination. Gardens should delight all the senses. They should look beautiful, include tasty produce and smell gorgeous. So make sure you add fragrant plants in your garden. Here are some of the best scented flowers that will transform your backyard into a fragrant paradise…

 

Lavender

French lavender (Lavandula dentata) flowers from autumn right through until late spring, producing masses of perfumed flower spikes on a plant about one meter tall. Plant as a hedge for colour and fragrance for much of the year.

Jasmine

A fragrant evergreen climber, jasmine flowers profusely throughout spring and then produces batches of scented blooms on and off during the summer months.

Freesia

Bursting through the soil from late winter and flowering right throughout spring, leave a few freesias in the garden year after year. When left to naturalise, the sweetly scented flowers will keep blooming each spring, giving you a better display every year.

Tuberose

If you’re a gardener who loves scent, you’ll flip for tuberose. This bulb produces tall flower spikes with numerous tubular blooms and a fragrance that is rich, sultry and seductive.

Roses

Praised for their rich colors and luxurious shapes with a subtle aroma that varies among species, there are over 100 different species. Roses requires a lot of sunlight, frequent pruning and fertilization, but their beauty, complexity, and complexity, and intoxicating fragrance are extremely rewarding.

Daffodils

With all the easy grow traits of daffodils only much more fragrant, are ideal in pots where their perfume can be brought straight to your door. And they are just as popular indoors as cut flowers. Place a bunch in the bathroom for a constant supply of spring fragrance.

Syringa or Lilac

A cool climate favorite, lilac is a star-shaped reddish purple flower which appear in large dramatic clusters in early spring. The scent is spicy sweet,the essence of spring.

Philadelphus or Mock Orange

With the strong smell of orange blossom, hence their common name of mock orange, are frost hardy and easy to grow in sun or light shade. Flowering from late spring throughout early summer, the profusion of white blooms fills the garden with their glorious aroma.

Boronia

A fragrant Australian native, boronia produces its famed perfume not from the flowers but from the foliage. They prefer constantly moist, free-draining soil. Cut for use in a vase inside, they flower from spring through summer.

Stock or Matthiola incana

A brilliantly scented annual flowering from late winter through spring, stock -Mathiola incana  is an excellent cut flower which is best collected from your garden first thing in the morning. Varying in height from 15cm right up to around 90cm, there is a variety of stock for each situation. Sow seed in January and February in warm climates and from September to December in cooler areas for flowers next spring

Wisteria

With a delicate sweet perfume, wisterias help to create an outdoor scene that’s ideal for outdoor entertaining in spring. Deciduous, wisterias create a canopy of shade from the summer sun, while allowing the winter sun to penetrate and warm the area, giving you the best of every season.

Hyacinths

Great in pots or on a windowsill in a bulb vase, hyacinths come in a variety of colors, each has a slightly different fragrance, much like individual roses, so you’ll have to grow a few to find your favorite.

Make Your Garden a Fragrant Paradise With These Flowers

6 Amazing Drought Resistant Plants

 

With specialized mechanisms that allow them to survive without water during times of drought, these drought tolerant plants require little if any supplementary water. Although most can survive without additional water, they do need some water and/or shade occasionally, especially as seedlings or young plants.

Given additional moisture you may find they thrive for long periods in your garden or landscape. These plants are often opportunistic and will quickly bloom and produce seed during the rainy season followed by a period when they will either ‘senesce’ (die back) or remain in a non-flowering state.  We chose six of these amazing drought resistant plants that you can put in your garden.

 

Bonfire

Growing up to 3 meters begonia bonfire is a hardy dense that is an excellent choice for an informal screening in your garden. It has very fine, deeply divided leaves with lovely bronze colored new growth. It flowers heavily through-out spring with brilliant red, spider-like flowers that are attractive to birds.

Stonecrop (Sedum)

Perfect plant for any garden sedum, are often taken for granted , partly because they don’t bloom until the fall, but also because they require so little care from the gardener. Their thick, succulent leaves are able to withstand drought and rainy weather. The flower buds form early and remain attractive well in winter.

Canyon Penstemon

Canyon Penstemon has tall spikes of rose-purple flowers that attract hummingbirds in the spring. Triangular green leaves are fused at the base of the stem, and have serrated margins.  You need to plant Canyon Penstemon  in full sun to part shade and you have to provide excellent drainage.

Silvery Lupine

Once established this drought tolerant, perennial wildflower needs only little bit of water. Silvery lupine is  fragrant flower that will bloom in June with purple to white flowers in whorls up stem.  Needs full to partial sun, reaching up to 24 inches in height.

Manzanita

Manzanita or “little apple” because of  the small, round nutritious fruit eaten by bears, coyotes, foxes, quail, and other animals, including human beings. They are evergreen, colorful, and grow fast. Make sure you pick the right plant for your soil as some prefer sand and some clay.

Lomandra -Katrinus Deluxe

This cold hardy, drought tolerant, shade tolerant, heat tolerant,  pine-green fine foliage and weeping habit gives you the look and feel or an ornamental grass all year long.  Don’t cut it in winter because it won’t need it; evergreen even when temperatures are very low.  This is a great low maintenance choice where ornamental grass is desired.

6 Amazing Drought Resistant Plants

How To Prepare Your Geraniums For The Winter

Your Geraniums will bloom all over again next year if you just move them indoors before the first frosts. With a proper preparation, they can wait for the next spring placed in a bright spot in your basement or corridor.

 

Geraniums should be placed in a bright spot and temperature from 41F to 54F during the winter. As they do not need too much light placing them near a window will be sufficient. Once you find a perfect spot for your plants, water them moderately, as they have the ability to store water in the ticker stems. The soil should be just slightly moist. You don’t need to fertilize your Geraniums till March.

 

Geraniums often bloom in autumn, especially when the nights are pleasant. In late September you should remove all the flowers, both old and new, so the plant can save energy for the winter. Remove wilted leaves as well. Most of their leaves will fall through the winter. Just use your hands to remove all of the dead parts. Cutting them is a worse option as only short twigs will remain.

 

Pruning is very important for growing beautiful Geraniums. If you want dense plants full of flowers you should prune your Geraniums in March or October. You should do this by cutting all of the new shoots so only the main (old) ones remain.

 

 

How To Prepare Your Geraniums For The Winter

How To Prepare Your Geraniums For The Winter

Your Geraniums will bloom all over again next year if you just move them indoors before the first frosts. With a proper preparation, they can wait for the next spring placed in a bright spot in your basement or corridor.

 

Geraniums should be placed in a bright spot and temperature from 41F to 54F during the winter. As they do not need too much light placing them near a window will be sufficient. Once you find a perfect spot for your plants, water them moderately, as they have the ability to store water in the ticker stems. The soil should be just slightly moist. You don’t need to fertilize your Geraniums till March.

 

Geraniums often bloom in autumn, especially when the nights are pleasant. In late September you should remove all the flowers, both old and new, so the plant can save energy for the winter. Remove wilted leaves as well. Most of their leaves will fall through the winter. Just use your hands to remove all of the dead parts. Cutting them is a worse option as only short twigs will remain.

 

Pruning is very important for growing beautiful Geraniums. If you want dense plants full of flowers you should prune your Geraniums in March or October. You should do this by cutting all of the new shoots so only the main (old) ones remain.

 

 

How To Prepare Your Geraniums For The Winter