Nature’s aromatherapy
When I commuted to work, I looked forward to driving into Sherborn at the end of a long summer day. I’d open my windows and breathe in the smell of trees and grass. Especially in summer, the fragrance of green, growing and blooming plants is the best kind of aromatherapy – calming and comforting.
It seems to me that nature’s odors reach their peak in June. In my yard a white azalea fills the air with its spicy, warm scent and milkweed blooms attract bees and butterflies with their heavy, sweet smell. The smells of summer bring their own pleasures, summoning up childhood memories of long, hot days exploring and playing outdoors.
These eight plants will provide nature’s aromatherapy in your yard from spring to summer.
1. Autumn Olive is an invasive shrub with silvery leaves that blooms in the spring and is pretty common in fields and along roadsides and edges of woods. Its small, inconspicuous flowers exude a strong vanilla smell that perfumes the air and beckons the resident hummingbird in my yard. I don’t recommend planting this shrub, but if you’ve been wondering about a vanilla scent in your yard, it might be an Autumn Olive that decided to pop up somewhere.
2. Crabapples and wild apples are traditional harbingers of spring, blooming in May. The smell of apple blossoms is distinctive, light and sweet, telling us spring has truly arrived, along with returning summer birds and emerging bugs. Wild apple trees plant themselves along roads and woodland edges in town.
3. Old garden roses were bred for scent, not just showy blooms. You need to get close to a rose flower to enjoy its fragrance along with a view of the velvety petals. I have two varieties of old roses in my yard that are sturdy and disease free, coming back year after year with their fragrant blooms in May and June. The scent of rose soaps or perfumes can be cloying, but the real thing is rich and delicious.
4. Fragrant azaleas can fill the yard with their spicy, warm scent. The native azalea, Rhododendron viscosum, has been hybridized to create Weston’s Innocence, a sturdy shrub that isn’t fussy and likes sun. It blooms for about 3 weeks of aromatherapy in my yard, but there are many other fragrant azaleas to choose from.
5. Common milkweed’s flowers are bunches of dusky pink florets that are not showy but their scent is heavy and sweet on the June air. Bees, butterflies and hummingbirds all nectar eagerly at their blooms. If a milkweed shows up in your yard, let it grow and spread for maximum pollinator habitat and aroma.
6. Linden trees have a wonderfully fragrant bloom at the beginning of summer. When I lived in Cambridge, I often parked under an ancient, huge linden (Tilia americana) that filled the air with its light, sweet scent. Count yourself lucky if you have one in your yard.
7. Clethra alnifolia’s common name is summersweet or sweet pepperbush. It’s said that European sailors in colonial times could smell summersweet blooming along the coast before seeing land, which tells you something about its aroma and former abundance. Flowering in July and August, these shrubs thrive in wetlands and along damp roadsides. It’s a common garden plant, also, widely available from nurseries.
8. White pine needles are the ultimate midsummer aromatherapy. When the hot summer sun bakes the needles on the ground, a warm, piney scent rises up. It’s the ultimate summer smell, evoking summer camps, hikes in the woods and trips to Maine.
In July and August when the temperatures are high, trees create their own, cool microclimates as they exhale water through their leaves, along with their wonderfully green fragrances that fill the air beneath them. Curiously, the fall bloomers, the goldenrods and asters, are not especially fragrant, although they are powerful bee magnets.
Scientists have found that breathing in plant smells can reduce your body’s stress chemicals. So the next time you’re feeling stressed out, sit down outside and breath in the scent of plants in your yard. They’ll calm your nerves and remind you to slow down and, yes, smell the roses.
