Autumn Embers vernal witch-hazel has pretty, fragrant, orange-yellow blooms from January to March. Your garden may be full of eye candy in the spring and summer, but have you considered plants that offer pleasures during the colder months?
You can start planting fragrant trees and shrubs now to give extra pizzazz to your winter garden. They will perfume the air at a time of year when not much else is going on in your yard.
Morton Arboretum
Morton Arboretum
Often scent comes from flowers or fruits. "But for many plants, the stems, leaves, bark, and even roots contain fragrant oils," said Abigail Rea, assistant manager of horticulture at the Morton Arboretum.
Rea suggested trees and other plants that work in a home landscape. They have the total package: beauty, scent and adaptability for our Midwestern climate and soils.
This time of year, katsura trees mark the transition to fall with a sweet aroma. Many compare it to cotton candy, cinnamon or ripe apples. You can't pinpoint the scent. It just seems to linger in the air.
For Rea, katsura is her favorite fall fragrance, but one that is bittersweet. "It means the growing season is over and winter's coming. It's a significant time of year," she said.
Katsura trees do best when planted in early spring, according to Rea, but fall and winter are great times to plan where you want a new tree. Katsura trees like sun and moist soil. They have a pleasing pyramid shape, reach a maximum width of 30 feet and top out at 60 feet tall.
We enjoy the sweet fragrance of magnolia blooms in the spring. But oils in the stems and leaves of this medium-size ornamental tree give a pleasing fragrance, too. You can plant a magnolia through late October. Doing late winter maintenance pruning (removing damaged limbs and suckers) on a magnolia can be an enjoyable sensory experience. Just don't get carried away and prune too much or you'll cut off spring buds, said Rea.
One fun idea for fall is to plant thyme between the stones of a patio. When you crush the herb underfoot, you'll rustle up a pleasing aroma. Rea's favorite is Doone Valley lemon thyme. Thyme does best in dry soils with full sun.
Autumn Embers vernal witch-hazel, while it's named for striking red fall color, also has pretty, fragrant, orange-yellow blooms from January to March, when few other plants in the garden are flowering. Witch-hazel is an adaptable plant. It likes sun or even dense shade and will flower lightly the first year it's planted.
We associate bayberry with the winter holidays. The waxy coating on the fruits has been added to candles for centuries. But the scent is also found in other parts of the plant. Just snap a twig or rub a leaf.
Some of the leaves, which turn coppery brown in fall, remain through winter. A round shrub that grows about six feet high, bayberry likes sun to part shade and doesn't mind dry soils or road salt.
And of course, you can always take a walk and breathe in the scent of fallen leaves. It's the best cold weather fragrance of all.
Laurie Casey is a staff writer at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.
