Smell

The sense of smell is powerful – some say the most powerful sense we have as it is strongly linked to our emotions and memory. It works by detecting odours that are picked up by tiny sensory cells in your mouth and nose. Your brain then interprets the incoming data and links it to hazards, memories, emotions, food and many other things.

In this trough

We start this trough with an evergreen Eucalyptus (French blue) known widely as the food of Koala bears, but it has grown into a favoured spa treatment for essential oils that sooth the skin and calm the mind, and also clears up the sniffles when you have a cold!

The next plant is a type of Teucrium with interesting spires of flowers. It is an old medieval British plant that was used to feed the bees. It’s a sub shrub, like a lavender, and part of the mint family.

Next to this, we have a very special Daphne which flowers on and off throughout the year and has what’s called an ‘eternal fragrance’.

The next beautiful pink flowered plant is Phlox Bright Eyes which is full of buds that just keep on giving, and it smells like a traditional English garden! We also have a Choisya (White Dazzler) which is sweetly scented like citrus flowers and is a nice evergreen with lacey leaves.

Another form of Teucrium here has the hairs on the leaves again, like the Lamb’s Ear, as it is from a hot, dry climate so it has its built in Factor 50 and is nice and soft to touch. T

he strange looking green stemmed plant is Cytisus Vanessa that has lovely yellow fragrant flowers in spring which bees adore! And we have a miniature lilac with pink flowers that will give us flushes of flowers throughout spring and summer that are divine for pollinators.

We also have a Saracocca confuse which is an evergreen that is called Sweet Christmas Box. The flowers come out near Christmas time, and will give us the Bzzzzzzzzzz of bees over the holiday season! Such a beautifully scented shrub. 

We also have an Agastache Blue Boa that smells of liquorice if you have a little rub of its leaves. It also has beautiful spires of flowers, again if you dead head, they just keep on coming and are such a lovely purple colour. We also have a Russian sage called Pervoskia Blue Spire with scented, aromatic leaves with wonderful fluffy buds that open up to blue flowers that are adored by bees. 

We will underplant this box with heavily scented  Narcissus bulbs (Sir Winston Churchill, Narcissus Pipit, Narcissus Sailboat, Narcissus Yellow Cheerfulness, Narcissus Quail, Hyacinths and Tulip Angelique).

 All video content is provided by Ann Evans of Barters Farm Nurseries Ltd.