Plants That Burst With Fragrance

The olfactory cells in the nasal membranes interpret smell, just as cells on the tongue discern taste. Fragrance and taste are closely related. If you plan now, your garden can provide interest for fragrance and taste beginning in early spring and last through the growing season.

Your ability to plant a tasty and fragrant garden depends on sun, good drainage and about one-third compost tilled in with the native soil. Plant a sampling of herbs, vegetables, fruit trees and berry bushes to reap tasty and fragrant plants. Lucky recipients will savor the flavor of this type of garden.

The extra benefits and variations you can achieve through this type of gardening will astound you. Use tomato vines to grace a walk. Train pole beans or peas onto a trellis to create privacy around a porch in summer. Strawberries make a great edible groundcover. Grow dill to soften a bare wall and cucumbers to cover the fence. Squash vines grow into excellent ground covers and offer high yield in full sun.

Blueberry and currant bushes blend well with ornamental shrubs. In the natural landscape, raspberries and blackberries fit appealingly and are natives. If you like nuts, plant butternut, English walnut and Chinese chestnut. Smaller fruit trees sometimes are grown exclusively for flowering value, but plant one or two instead for their fruit. Install disease-resistant varieties.

Design for a sense of taste as well as with a sense of taste. An edible garden, accented with fragrant plants, can offer a great deal of satisfaction on many levels, with possibilities galore for plant combinations.

Joel M. Lerner is president of Environmental Design in Capitol View Park, Md. E-mail or contact him through his Web site, http://www.gardenlerner.com.