The Fragrant Garden: A Book About Sweet Scented Flowers and Leaves

This is a wonderful source of inspiration to anyone who has dreamed of creating a fragrant garden. It's well written, literate and enthusiastic, with lots of examples of the kind of plants you'll want if you are to create your own perfumed paradise. (The plants mentioned are from the temperate zones of N. America). It will make a wonderful addition to your gardening library as you refer to it over and over for the best scented plants. And consider this: writing about fragrance is not easy -- the desireability of any given fragrance is highly subjective. For example, one hyancinth bloom indoors can be overpowering, while three outdoors can be intoxicatingly sweet. Drawings and photos are of no help. It takes a talented and insightful writer to convey the relative merits of different scents. I am an experienced gardener and find that fragrance is one of my chief criteria for selecting plants. This lovely book has helped me to learn more, by anwering some basic questions, e.g., what is point of honeysuckle or dianthus without scent? Why have fragrant violets fallen out of favor? How can pelargonium mimic every known fruit and herb - deliciously? How many different fragrances do old-fashioned roses possess? Why do so few people know that there are fragrant tulips and petunias? And so on....