Perfume Your Garden With Scented Climbers

Fragrant climbers are terrific in the garden, especially at this time of year when you can really make the most of your outside space.

Our uncharacteristically delightful weather is sending people into a bit of a garden frenzy, with barbecues and weeding and hosing and trimming all going on al fresco.

Beautiful scented climbers thrive with attention, adding visual interest as well as delicious fragrances, and most intensify in the warm evenings so the plants are lovely around a seating area or patio. They look great tumbling over a pergola or a fence, and if you can train them up a wall, the scent wafts into the house.

Honeysuckle is a choice climber; suited to partial shade and will happily wander up a trellis or a tree for you. There are lots of types to choose from at Hanley’s Garden Centre; have a chat to Damien about how to keep them happy in the heat.

Serotina is a classic cottage-garden climber, with big tubular creamy-white flowers, streaked dark-red purple, that give it a two-tone appearance. In hot summers like this, the flowers may be followed by small, bright red fruits. It’s a deciduous honeysuckle and flowers later than most varieties, so will bloom until late Autumn. It looks lovely growing through trees and prefers a bit of shade.

Belgica is another type of honeysuckle; a vigorous deciduous climber with paired ovate leaves and red-flushed white flowers. It smells edible.

Halliana honeysuckle (sounds like one of Jamie Oliver’s kids) has smaller, less conspicuous flowers but has a really long flowering season and the little blooms open white but fade to yellow, so both colours are visible. It looks terrific if you pair it with clematis, that other mad climber.

Jasmine produces delicately fragrant flowers from mid-summer to early autumn. A vigorous climber, it's best grown over a shed, porch, arbour or other outbuilding. It grows well with climbing roses, honeysuckle or clematis, but also looks good on its own. Try ‘affine’ with its clusters of pretty pink-tinged white flowers.

If you can’t resist a sweet rose ask Damien about ‘High Hopes’. An optimistic name for an ambitious climber (maybe it’s a social climber?) with elegant buds in a classic soft rose pink with a dark heart; blooming in abundant masses and with a strong, almost spicy fragrance.

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