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Gardening with Dave Allan: Scent in the winter garden | HeraldScotland

Here are some great suggestions from Dave Allan about sweetly scented flowering shrubs for your Winter Garden:

Take the small cream flowers of shrubby Lonicera fragrantissima (Common Name: sweet breath of spring): They suffuse the air with compelling fragrance. You know they’re frustratingly close but sometimes must act as a sniffer dog to track them down, hidden in a tangle of leaf-stripped twigs.

I can’t see beyond Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn.’ It’s always a joy to have a whiff every time I pass by on the way up to the duck run. A flush of little buds readily replaces any that have been blasted brown by frost and snow. Viburnum farreri and V. tinus also faithfully flower from November to February.

I’m thinking of shrubs like Mahonia japonica and M. x media (Common Name: Oregon grape-holly). These evergreens do boast highly scented sprays of the tiniest yellow buttons, so don’t banish them to the gloomiest corner just because they’re tough woodland edge plants. Why not plant them where you’ll actually see them?

 

6 must-visit garden shows for 2020

From House Beautiful (ww.housebeautiful.com) | @hb:

“What are the best British garden shows to visit in 2020? From the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show to fringe events like Seedy Sunday, these gardening events are perfect for the green-fingered horticultural lover, regardless of whether you’re a budding beginner or a seasoned pro.”

Botanical History On This Day

1803 William Starling Sullivant, Ohio surveyor turned bryologist, was born; his exquisitely prepared moss floras and Icones Muscorum made him the pre-eminent American moss expert of his time and inspired the Sullivant Moss Society.

1859 Nathaniel Lord Britton, American botanist and taxonomist who co-founded the New York Botanical Garden with his bryologist wife Elizabeth Knight, was born; together they modeled it on Kew and helped anchor American botany in the Bronx.

1864 Frances Benjamin Johnston, pioneering press photographer and garden documentarian, was born; her lantern-slide lectures and luminous images of American gardens earned praise from Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. as “the finest existing.”

1923 Sara Plummer Lemmon, California botanist who championed the golden poppy as state flower and became the first woman to summit Arizona’s Santa Catalinas—thereby lending her name to Mount Lemmon—died after a life of “botanical wedding trips” with her husband J.G. Lemmon.

Unearthed Words

Winter verses from Katherine S. White, Celia Thaxter, Dr. Charles Garfield Stater, Allen Lacy, and Cynthia Adams, all turning to memory and imagination to tend the garden of the mind until spring returns.
Check out the collection of poems that celebrate the Winter Gardens of the Mind’s Eye

Grow That Garden Library™

Read The Daily Gardener review of Cultivating Delight by Diane Ackerman

Buy the book on Amazon: Cultivating Delight by Diane Ackerman

Great Gifts for Gardeners

DII Shamrock Green Buffalo Check Apron – a cheerful, one-size-fits-most cotton apron with front pocket and long adjustable ties, perfect for student gardeners, kitchen helpers, or anyone who wants a splash of green while they cook or pot up seedlings.

Today's Botanic Spark

1759 The British Museum & Sir Hans Sloane opened its doors, founded on the vast natural history collections of physician-botanist Hans Sloane, whose herbariums and curiosities quietly transformed a private cabinet of wonders into a national treasure trove for plant lovers.

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