Anna Pavord's top tips on the flowers to plant for a sweeter-smelling patch

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For plant breeders, scent in flowers is an irritation. They know we like it, but it can't be manipulated as easily as other characteristics of a flower. One of them explained to me how scent genes are often locked in with other traits such as colour or size. While the breeders are waving their genetic wands, trying perhaps to make a flower bigger, scent fades away unseen. In a rose or a sweet pea, this is a disaster. Why anyone ever buys a rose without a scent is a mystery. As a race, the old roses still have the edge over more modern Hybrid Tea types, but deep cerise pink 'Wendy Cussons' though an awkward grower, smells richly of attar of roses, velvety crimson 'Ena Harkness' is gorgeously perfumed and, as you'd expect from the name, 'Fragrant Cloud', raised in Germany in 1968 is also worth growing for its smell.










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