Smells Aplenty

I’ve been working on a planting project these last couple days and it has been SO fun.   It makes me wonder why I can’t make a living just planting gardens for people.  No wheel-barrowing of earth, no swinging of picks, no placing of flagstone and boulders – just planting pretty things where the ground is soft and the big design work is already done.  Eh?  In what region of the world can I pursue this kind of position?  The Hamptons?  Laguna Beach?  I’ll live in a tent in some public park and rent a storage space for my tools and the cat.

Anyway, I’ve spent some lovely time with nice-smelling plants during this project, and then thought about how nice it is to intentionally plan a space around fragrance, since I have always like nice smells.  I’m not doing that right now, but maybe in the future?  I would start with these:

Mount Lemmon Marigold:  Heavenly.  I want to become one with this plant.  It’s not the flowers that smell fabulous, but the leaves, and they are just fantastic.  Someday when I become a Very Fancy Person (VFP), I will have a custom perfume made that captures the scent of this foliage.

Chaparral Sage: Another delight in the olfactory department.  Lots of different sages smell great, but this one is a bit more flowery and really packs a punch (in a non-headache kind of way, I think).  To boot, it has nice foliage, blue-purple flowers, and it attracts butterflies and hummingbirds.

Chocolate Flower: The name is no lie.  After leaving the nursery with a few of these in the car all I could smell was chocolate.  Pretty rad!  Other facts: cute yellow flowers, low water, and they bloom spring to fall.  Sold.

What’s on your list of best-smelling plants?  Rosemary?  Jasmine?  Orange blossoms?