Wild Green Yonder is a recurring monthly feature from the Norfolk Botanical Garden staff.
It is always a bit surprising just how many fragrant plants bloom in winter and early spring. Perhaps the flowers need to do whatever possible to advertise that they are open for business, especially when there are few pollinating insects active this early in the season. It also may be a bit surprising just how many of these plants come from Asia. However, when you consider that we share a similar climate – with relatively mild winters, hot and humid summers, and regular rainfall – it is no wonder that such seemingly exotic plants do well here.
They don’t just grow well here at Norfolk Botanical Garden; all would do well in your garden, and one whiff of their fragrant flowers can transport you someplace far away.
Revered in China and Japan,
flowering apricot
(Prunus mume) is one of the first trees to bloom, often in January or February. This small tree comes in several shades of pink, or white, and it has the sweetest aroma, smelling like spring on a cold winter day.
Wintersweet
(Chimonanthus praecox) is appropriately named, as it typically blooms in February with yellow flowers, and it has a very sweet aroma. This large, multistemmed shrub is easy to grow.
Gardeners and non-gardeners alike are familiar with the invasive but very fragrant vine,
Japanese honeysuckle
(Lonicera japonica). However, winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) is a well-behaved shrub, and its fragrant flowers smell like a bowl of Froot Loops cereal.
Winter daphne
(Daphne odora) is a notoriously fickle plant, which has frustrated many gardeners, including some of us here at Norfolk Botanical Garden. However, it is worth the effort to grow. In late February its blossoms perfume the air with the scent of lemons, vanilla and sugar.
Edgeworthia
, or paperbush (Edgeworthia chrysantha), is one winter’s showiest, and most fragrant shrubs. The silvery, woolly buds form in December, and swell through the winter, opening in February with rich golden-yellow blooms that smell of sweet daffodils.
In late March the pink buds of
Korean spice viburnum
(Viburnum carlesii) begin opening to clusters of white flowers. The fragrance is sweet and spicy.
Evergreen clematis
(Clematis armandii) is a vine and is often mistaken for something else, as most other members of its family shed their leaves in winter. Late in March, fragrant white flowers open, letting the world know that spring has begun.
To see more
Many of the late-winter/early spring fragrant blooms that can be enjoyed at Norfolk Botanical Garden hail from Asia and do well in our similar climate. By visiting the garden now, you also can take in LanternAsia, a lantern exhibition that has transformed the garden with captivating works of art.
Where: Norfolk Botanical Garden, 6700 Azalea Garden Road
When: through May 13, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Beginning April 1, closing hour on Fridays-Sundays will be 10 p.m.
Tickets: Garden members will be admitted free during daylight hours. After 4 p.m. in March, members will be charged $15 for adults and $5 for children 3-17. Beginning in April through May 13, those prices will be charged beginning at 5 p.m. Visitors who are not garden members will be charged $20 for adults and $10 for children 3-17.
More info: 757-441-5830; http://www.lanternasaia.org
Les Parks is the director of horticulture at Norfolk Botanical Garden
