Adding fragrant flowers to your garden not only adds an amazing aroma to your yard, but it also brightens up the landscape around your home. Flowers come in an abundance of varieties, and some do better in certain kinds of climates. Flowers also have different colors and scents and can be found on certain types of plants, bushes, or shrubs.
Many gardeners add fragrant flowers to their yards to make it look pretty and smell nice, but there is also another advantage to having a wonderfully scented garden. Certain scents can actually help people relax, and they aid in relieving anxiety. Aromatherapy is a huge industry that has capitalized on this olfactory phenomenon. Proponents of holistic healing use aromatherapy to help heal diseases, improve overall health, and alter a person's mood.
While many people love the fragrance of flowers, some are left to wonder why flowers give off a scent and what makes them smell the way they do. Why do some flowers smell sweet and lovely while others smell pungent and not very pleasing? The world of flowers is quite an amazing one, and this guide will help you determine which flowers are best for adding fantastic fragrances to your garden. It will also help to answer some of those questions that the more scientific minds want to know about and tell how you can benefit from adding fragrant flowers to your garden.
- The Best Fragrant Flowers for Your Garden: This article from Better Homes and Gardens describes and shows photos of flowers to make gardens smell beautiful and fragrant.
- Garden Scents to Remember: This collection of fragrant leaves and flowers will leave you wishing you could smell them right through your computer.
- Fragrance in Flowers: This article gives an explanation about how flowers get their fragrant smells.
- Why Do Flowers Smell Good? The Smithsonian delves into the science of why flowers smell and looks at how people have used flowers' scents.
- National Gardening Association's Plant Finder: This handy plant finder will help you find fragrant flowers according to color and season of bloom.
- Making Scents: The Aromatic World of Flowers: A scientific article gives great information on how and why plant fragrances have powerful effects.
- Fragrant Plants: This guide gives some ideas of plants you could add to your garden to make it more fragrant.
- Space Scents: This interesting experiment done in outer space by NASA answers the question, "Do roses smell the same way they do in space as they do on Earth?" It also gives interesting information on what makes flowers smell the way they do.
- Questions and Answers about Aromatherapy: A study from the National Cancer Institute discusses how the use of aromatherapy, including fragrances from plants and flowers, is believed to have a medicinal purpose.
- Lilac Collection: Take a look at some beautiful lilacs and just imagine how good they smell. The photos are part of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's collection.
- Plants for Special Occasions: A gift-giving guide advises on what kind of plant or flower to buy for any special occasion.
- How to Grow Fragrant Flowers (video): This video from the Dubuque Arboretum & Botanical Gardens gives simple advice on how to grow your own fragrant flowers.
- Our Favorite Fragrant Flowers: Check out Country Living's nine favorite fragrant flowers and tips for growing them yourself.
- Why Do Flowers Have Scents? Find the answer to this question in this article from Scientific American.
- Roses: Planting, Growing and Caring for Rose Plants: Everyone knows roses are some of the most beautiful, fragrant flowers there are. Here are some great tips for planting, growing and caring for your roses.
- Biochemical and Molecular Genetic Aspects of Floral Scents: This article discusses the scientific reasons why certain flowers and plants smell the way they do and the benefits of giving off an aroma.
- Scent in the Garden: In this article, you will learn about the importance of creating your garden to emphasize scents and how flowers have evolved over time to create their scents.
- Great Plant Picks: This amazing guide will help you choose your plants and flowers according to scent, color, and climate.