a handmade garden

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Stop to Smell the Roses... and Then Some

These fragrant plants perfume the garden with heavenly scents.

Scent is personal. While we can share the view of a pretty sunset or the sound of the neighbor’s windchimes, our sense of smell is intimate, residing solely within our physical self. Fragrance may be invisible, but it’s a powerful element in the garden. Even with my eyes closed, I can tell the time of the year, even the time of day, by the scents in my garden.

It’s officially summer when a heady-but-not-too-heady fragrance greets me as I step out the back door. Clothed with glossy evergreen leaves and a constellation of creamy white flowers all summer long, star jasmine (Trachleospermum jasminoides) is a hardy shrub that thinks it’s a vine, or maybe it’s a woody vine that wants to be a shrub. 

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GROW in the Seattle Times