Scented plants for a fragrant chiminea lifestyle

The fragrance of wonderful food being cooked is one of the things we love best about the chiminea lifestyle. Scented plants add even more magic to outdoor life, creating an unforgettable ambience rich in the feel-good factor. Here’s a list of fragrant plants to grow around your outdoor entertainment area to make the entire BBQ party experience even more special.

Scented Primrose – In the wild they’re usually yellow, occasionally pink. But cultivated primroses come in all sorts of tasty colours and they smell delightful, flowering early in the year to give you sweet fragrance well before spring kicks off properly. They’re easy to grow, cheap and cheerful, perfect in pots or in the ground. Plumeria, AKA Frangipani, smells delicious during the day and the scent gets stronger after dusk, perfect for chiminea parties. Evergreen clematis ‘Armandii’ offers lovely shiny green foliage when it isn’t flowering, a delight to the eye. It can sometimes flower two or even sometimes three times a year to give you a sweet, apple-like scent from its small yellow-white clusters of star-like flowers.

Nicotina, also known as the tobacco flower, offers pretty little tubular blooms that open mid-morning to give you a powerful scent rather like lilies. And Lily of the Valley‘s strong floral fragrance comes from its many tiny little white bell-like blooms, which sit low down to the ground along with its pretty, wide, flat leaves. Because it flowers in spring it delivers an early-year treat for chiminea party lovers.

Viburnum‘s glorious sweet, spicy scent is particularly evident in the Korean spice variety with its spring-flowering fluffy white blooms that appear through spring and well into the summer. Then there’s the Rose, probably the best-known and loved flower scent. While modern roses don’t always come with a scent, there doesn’t seem like much point having a rose that doesn’t give you that wonderful, unique fragrance everyone loves so much. Some rose varieties flower from early summer through to the first frost, generously scenting your entertainment area for months.

The awesome Sweet Osmanthus comes from Japan, China and Cambodia, with beautiful orange flowers and a scent a lot like fruit. Think apricots and you get the picture. It’s perfectly happy growing on the patio. Then there’s the Mock Orange, a chilly weather choice perfect for British weather that flowers through summer with a refreshing orange-like smell. Common or garden mint, which comes in all sorts of varieties, is ridiculously easy to grown as well as extremely fragrant, giving you everything from a chocolatey scent through spearmint to peppermint from its pretty, fluffy purple flowers. It likes a damp place and doesn’t enjoy being dried out, perfect for the shady, cooler spots around your entertainment area.

Lilac flowers are fleeting, not lasting very long, but their sweet smell is a classic, absolutely gorgeous. The flowers come in a huge choice of colours from deepest dark purple to pale pinks and white, and they’re really easy to grow. Lilac flowers in spring or summer, depending on the variant, and many of the new breeds are happy living in pots. While Angel’s Trumpet might be exotic, happier in your conservatory than in the garden, you can bring a potted one outdoors in warm weather to enjoy the extraordinary fragrance the huge trumpet-like flowers give off at dusk, powerful and sweet with a slightly weird edge you’ll either love or hate!

Perfumiers adore Daphne, another strongly-scented flower with a sweet and spicy touch. If you can keep it alive in our weather it’ll treat you to an amazing scent, but it is quite challenging to grow. Night scented stock is a lot easier, happy in colder weather with an intoxicating lily-like scent in the evenings and available in all sorts of lush colours. And jasmine, which comes in many different varieties, shapes and sizes, also offers lovely scents.

Herbs often appreciate well-drained conditions where their feet don’t get wet, and they’re usually small and neat so are great for smaller spaces as well as pots and even stuffed into the cracks in dry walls. Grow Chamomile in pots and Lavender in well-drained sunny places. Add Thyme, Lemon verbena, Rosemary, Fennel, Lemon balm, Dill, Bergamot, Meadowsweet, Pennyroyal, Garlic and Chives and you don’t just get the scent, you get the flavour as well. Pick them to use in your BBQ food for a heavenly touch. If you have the time, energy and cash to create a Chamomile lawn you’ll create a little slice of scented heaven, awesome to walk an sit upon because doing so releases the scent.

Honeysuckle smells glorious, another common and easy-to-grow scented plant that won’t just sit there, it’ll scramble climb all over the place to dangle its lovely scented blooms above your head, up a tree or bush, over an archway or pergola. Last but not least, try your hand at growing Freesias, whose fresh scent boosts people’s mood with its evocative fruity sweetness. While not frost hardy, they’re great grown in pots and flower right the way through from June to September.

How’s that for a list to kick off a scented chiminea lifestyle? We hope you enjoy a fragrant summer out there in your garden with your chiminea and the people you love.