Scented Geraniums

Lime Scented Geranium with Tiny Purple Flowers!

One of the most pleasurable things in gardening is having your plants offer up fabulous fragrances.

Scented geraniums will keep you in good stead in this regard. Many years ago I would travel with friends for an afternoon at Caprilands in Coventry, Connecticut and it was there that I first learned about scented geraniums. I never really took kindly to "normal" geraniums as they didn't smell well!

The woman who ran Caprilands was quite unique. She would hold court and offer up very entertaining lectures in the greenhouse followed by a luscious lunch for approximately 75 women in her antique farmhouse. Adelma Simmons was wonderful and her thriving business selling herbs and plants was amazing.

I purchased my first scented geraniums from her and some of the ones in my window today are decendents of her plants. Every winter my window becomes overgrown with big leafy plants that fragrance my flat with scents of rose, lemon and lime.

For some reason, my nutmeg geraniums have failed over the last couple of years. It's as if they are more fragile and likely that something environmentally evil is at work in their demise.

I would like to try nutmegs again as these are incredible in their aroma and the leaves are very delicate. Flowers are secondary to the scented geraniums unlike other geraniums.

Aromatherapy is another passion. Recently I bought some geranium scented oils at Whole Foods and it's fantastic. I realized after using it in a diffuser one day, that the fragrance was actually Rose Geranium.

One of these days, I would like to have a little greenhouse!