Landscape design is a holistic endeavor, orchestrated to provide stimulation and pleasure for all of the senses. Often, amateur designers place the largest emphasis on looks, without taking the other senses into consideration. With the right attention to detail, you can integrate landscaping elements that provide pleasing sounds, tangible delights, fruits, and vegetables to please the palate, as well as herbs and blooms that integrate pleasing aromas.
Plant These Aromatic Plants for Gardens and Landscapes
Every time the breeze blows or a flower opens you have the opportunity to enjoy intoxicating fragrances – compliments of Mother Nature. Here are some recommendations for plants to add to your landscape in order to reap rewarding aromatic benefits. Remember to keep wind direction in mind to guide their scent, whether it be towards an open bedroom window on a summer evening or to infuse a favorite outdoor seating area.
Lavender. Lavender is hardy, withstands Colorado winters, and thrives in dry climates. Its blooms are both colorful and aromatic, and they’re celebrated worldwide in their dried state. Just a few plants will add lavender’s calming scent to your garden spaces. An added bonus are the bees and other pollinators that will buzz and fly about, taking advantage of its pollen.
Rosemary. A staple in most kitchen gardens, rosemary plants do well in arid climates but aren’t fans of the cold. For this reason, you’re better off planting rosemary in portable containers that you can protect and insulate from the harshest winter weather. They are pretty hardy, so a few days indoors or in a decently-lit garage shouldn’t hurt them. In addition to their outdoor aroma, you’ll enjoy the addition of fresh-cut sprigs for your kitchen recipes.
Roses. No list of aromatic plants would be complete without a nod to roses. Examples that thrive in Colorado include two native varieties, such as Rosa woodsii and Rosa acicularis as well as species that have adapted to our climate, like Rosa Sydonie and a climbing rose called Paul’s Himalayan Musk. Roses are typically higher maintenance, so hire a professional maintenance team if you aren’t a consummate gardener.
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Other beautifully scented flowering plants include chocolate daisies and creeping phlox. Of course, many conifers release a lovely scent when warmed by the sun, as do sweet aslyssum, bouncing bets, honeysuckle, and wisteria.
Would you like to design and grow a garden that integrates aromatic plants into your landscape? Contact Lifescape Colorado and schedule a consultation. We are here to assist you create, cultivate and maintain an extra-sensory landscape experience.