Sensory garden plants with scented flowers: pink and white

Plenty of plants, of a variety of shapes, sizes, and colours, can bring a sensory feeling to your garden, so it is possible to create a full and attractive border even in our sometimes challenging UK climate

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<i>Daphne bholua </i> ‘Jacqueline Postill’ in a border
Daphne bholua  ‘Jacqueline Postill’ in a border

Quick facts

  • Sensory plants can help to bring back memories and help lift your mood
  • Having sensory plants that have been prominent in your life can spark conversation with others
  • Some scented plants can have calming effects

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The planting plan

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 sensory planting design features a combination of flowering shrubs and perennials that will provide extra sensory stimulation and flowers with a pink and white theme. Once established, they will thrive together in your garden to provide interest throughout the year.  

Plants for sensory gardens with pink and white scented flowers

© James Lawrence

Choosing sensory plants for scented pink and white flowers

These plants help to stimulate the senses within a small space. The Osmanthus provides an evergreen backdrop to offset the remaining planting, and has perfumed flowers in winter along with the Daphne. Rosa and Hydrangea provide scented summer interest. The Hydrangea and Geranium will also attract pollinators, helping to increase garden biodiversity.
  
In addition to colour, Geranium helps to cover bare soil, protecting the soil surface, suppressing weeds and reducing soil moisture loss by soil 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 - Osmanthus x burkwoodii
2 - Hydrangea paniculata ‘Big Ben’
3 - Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’
4 - Rosa Claire Marshall
5 - Geranium ‘Ingwersen’s Variety’
1 - Osmanthus x burkwoodii is a slow-growing evergreen shrub with dark green leaves and clusters of small, highly scented white flowers in winter.

2 - Hydrangea paniculata ‘Big Ben’ has light green leaves and red-brown stems. Its scented flower clusters have a conical shape and open pale green, fading to green-white and maturing to deep pink.  

3 - Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’ is a semi-evergreen shrub with leathery green leaves. Highly fragrant pale purple-pink and white flowers open in late winter, which are followed by black berries.

4 - Rosa Claire Marshall is a compact, bushy rose with glossy dark green foliage. Clusters of scented pink-purple flowers are borne from summer into autumn. 

5 - Geranium ‘Ingwersen’s Variety’ is a perennial with aromatic, deeply lobed leaves and pale pink flowers with contrasting dark centres in early summer. 

About sensory planting

Sensory planting is designed to stimulate the senses of smell, sound, taste and touch, as well as sight. It tempts 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.
 

Why choose a sustainable planting combination?

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

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The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.