Fragrant Options for the Garden

Here's a look at some super-fragrant options for the garden:

Chocolate flower (Berlandiera lyrata): This native wildflower produces dark-eyed, yellow daisies that exude a rich, chocolate aroma in the morning. Best with minimal water once established. Can reseed. Perennial.

Sunset Hyssop (Agastache rupestris): Bold brushes of sunset orange flowers from August to frost. Native to high mountains of the Southwest, the whole plant exudes a rich, root-beer aroma. An exotic contribution to water-smart gardens or perennial borders.

Lavender (Lavandula): These fragrant European plants of the mint family have spikes of pale-purplish flowers and yield a distinct aroma and aromatic oil.

Sea Foam Artemisia (Aremisia versicolor): This vigorous, attractive groundcover has lacy, mounding foliage of silvery blue and smells wonderful when rubbed up against. Clump-forming and noninvasive. Perennial.

Night-scented stock (Matthiola bicornis): Deliciously scented flowers which open in the evening. Ideal for window boxes.

Carol Mackie Daphne (Daphne x burkwoodii): This trim shrub has whorls of nearly evergreen, cream-edged foliage. It produces a heavy display of very fragrant, pale pink flowers in spring, and often again in the fall. It is adaptable and quick-growing.

Angel Trumpets (Brugmansia): Exotic shrubs which blossom with large, sweet-smelling, trumpetlike flowers.

Sources: Plant Select; Botanic Gardens; Colorado State University