Sensory garden plants with scented flowers: cool colours

James Lawrence, RHS Principal Horticultural Advisor, has designed this simple, attractive, and most importantly, sustainable border design for you to try at home with plants that are easy to grow, widely available and look good together.   

This simple planting design provides a range of plants that once established will thrive together in your garden and provide a variety of sensory interest throughout the year.

It consists of a combination of flowering shrubs and perennials

Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs. that will provide a splash of light blue colour, and even more importantly, fragrance.   

James Lawrence

These plants help to stimulate the senses within a small space. The Elaeagnus and Phlox provide summer scent from fragrant flowers, while the Caryopteris, Salvia, Agastache and Nepeta add scent through aromatic foliage, especially when touched. The highly perfumed Elaeagnus flowers in late autumn.

Most of the plants will also attract pollinators, helping to increase garden biodiversity

The variety of living organisms (plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms) in a particular environment. Boosting the biodiversity of your garden has many benefits, including supporting wildlife, improving soil health and reducing the likelihood of pest and disease problems. .

In addition to colour, the Phlox helps to cover bare soil, protecting the soil surface, suppressing weeds and reducing soil moisture loss by evaporation from the soil surface.

Using an organic mulch, preferably homemade compost, while the plants establish can help to provide the same benefits. Mulches should be spread when the soil is already moist to help trap some of that moisture before it dries out in summer.

1 - Caryopteris x clandonensis ‘Heavenly Blue’ is a deciduous

Deciduous refers to plants (mainly trees and shrubs) that lose their leaves seasonally, usually during autumn. This is a natural process triggered by the season's shorter days and lower temperatures and allows plants to conserve energy during the winter months. shrub with arching branches bearing toothed, grey-green leaves and clusters of small dark blue flowers in late summer and early autumn.

2 - Elaeagnus x submacrophylla is an evergreen shrub with leathery, metallic sea-green leaves, silvery beneath, and small, intensely fragrant flowers in autumn.

3 - Salvia ‘Blue Spire’ is a deciduous sub-shrub with white stems bearing aromatic grey-green leaves. It has large, plumy heads of small violet-blue flowers in late summer and autumn.

4 -Agastache ‘Blackadder’ is a herbaceous perennial

Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs. forming clumps of leafy stems, which bear spikes of small violet-blue flowers from summer to early autumn.

5 - Nepeta grandiflora ‘Summer Magic’ is a deciduous perennial with aromatic, grey-green leaves and densely clustered, violet-blue flowers carried on spikes from summer into early autumn.

6 - Phlox divaricata ‘Clouds of Perfume’ is a semi-evergreen perennial with spreading stems, hairy oval leaves and loose clusters of fragrant, pale lavender-blue flowers in early summer.

Sensory planting is designed to stimulate the senses of smell, sound, taste and touch, as well as sight. They tempt a visitor to view plants at close range, to reach out and touch, to inhale a fragrance, to listen to gentle sounds, and to actively experience the garden with all their senses.

By choosing plants that are good for senses, you can improve mood and general wellbeing. The sensory attributes allow people to engage with the environment around them in a way that is meaningful and beneficial to their mind and body.

Using the ethos of ‘right plant, right place’ to create a sustainable planting combination is great for the environment. It helps avoid waste and the use of products and practices needed to try and help ailing plants, such as the application of fertiliser. It also creates robust, long-lived planting that benefits soil health and garden biodiversity

The variety of living organisms (plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms) in a particular environment. Boosting the biodiversity of your garden has many benefits, including supporting wildlife, improving soil health and reducing the likelihood of pest and disease problems. . For more information about sustainable gardening, please see the RHS Sustainability Strategy.