These plants help to stimulate the senses within a small space. The Eleagnus and Phlox provide summer scent from fragrant flowers, while the Caryopteris, Salvia, Agastache and Nepeta add scent through aromatic foliage, especially when touched. The small but highly perfumed Eleagnus flowers in late autumn. Most of the plants will also attract pollinators, helping to increase garden biodiversity.   

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.

Consider mulching the bare soil to help this further while waiting for plants to spread, using an organic mulch, preferably homemade compost. 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 ‘Heavenly Blue’

2 - Elaeagnus x submacrophylla 

3 - Salvia ‘Blue Spire’

4 - Agastache ‘Blackadder’

5 - Nepeta ‘Summer Magic’

6 - Phlox divaricata ‘Clouds of Perfume’

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 forming clumps of leafy stems, which bear spikes of small violet-blue flowers from summer to early autumn. 

5 - Nepeta grandiflora ‘Summer magic’^PBR 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.