When it comes to sensory stimulation, spring has the motherlode. It’s spilling out of every corner now, giving the senses a big boost.
Ears are tilted now for the trickling brook, birds and the things that go peep in the night; gradually, arms are bared to receive the warmed air; eyes smile appreciatively at the lingering daylight and a tiny turtle with neck lifted as it heads out on the open road (like in Steinbeck’s opening of The Grapes of Wrath).
Meanwhile, the nose takes a direct hit, quite willingly, as the perfume of early spring flowers pervades the newborn air. I was born in spring and each year I feel reborn to experience the season. It’s a new beginning.
So much of the spring is announced in scent. And yet people have different interpretations of the exact smell that distinguishes this season. “Sea air. Mulch. Drying tar. Barbeque. Manure. Hyacinth. Burning leaves.”
Lilac gets my vote as the one true fragrance identifying a New England spring; with an added shower, the subtle tones are spiked in deliciousness. I recall once leading a tour through the Arnold Arboretum during Lilac Week and one lady told me she’d lost her ability to smell. It seemed brutally unfair, considering we walked past hillsides drenched with lilacs in their peak! Hopefully her ability to summon the scent from memory might have given her some consolation.
Have you noticed that many of the flowers that coincide with the lilac have similar undertones? Work your way through a border of peonies, iris, mock orange, viburnum, pansies, sweet pea, hyacinth and stock and you’ll feel like a tester at a Parisian parfumerie, wearing the trademark rosy nose. Fortunately, they don’t all bloom at once, but in succession, giving us time to appreciate them individually.
What is this elusive thing called scent anyhow? Well, for one thing, it’s a gateway to emotions. I’m told that the compartment that processes scent in the brain resides next to the compartment that holds memory. When you rediscover a scent from way back – (snickerdoodle cookies and my grandmother’s linen closet) – it’s possible to time travel, overlapping present and past.
I was in England with my family walking down a country lane. It had just rained and then it hit me: a fragrance that I recognized from early childhood. Although I couldn’t place the exact plant, I knew it brought me back to a place in my great grandmother’s garden by the shed. Although the plant’s name wasn’t retrievable, the fragrance was.
Scent is an inherent sense for some of us. My family knows mine is akin to a bloodhound’s nose. Vinegar and lavender go a long way toward undoing the unpleasant olfactory experiences. Nothing’s more welcoming than walking into a home that smells clean.
Fragrance can be deliberately planted within our garden to conjure different chapters of our life. The roses worn as corsages; lily of the valley that grew on a bank by my grandmother’s house and the honeysuckle that wafts along the beach in summer. It’s all a part of the great mystique of nature; each enjoyed in turn.
Indulge your nose and take a journey to forgotten places.
If you want to plant for fragrance, consider: evening stock, flowering tobaccos, four-o’clock flower, amaryllis, heliotrope, lavender, mignonette, phlox, petunia, sweet alyssum, tuberose, and wallflowers… and shrubs such as lilacs, roses, clethra, mock orange, viburnum, and many more.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” – Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
The Seaside Gardener
By Laura McLean