Why am I sniffy about wild flowers? They have little scent

Thank heavens I have never wilded my garden. It has become the buzz of the past two years in the media, especially from voices whose gardens are too big for them. Stand up to them and think hard before you act. I will return another week to at least eight reasons why I regard much of garden-wilding as a second-class cop-out. At this peak time for summer pleasure, I want to emphasise a ninth one: scent.

I am an apostle of the perfumed garden. White-flowered lily of the valley never turns up in sunny meadow plantings, but one of its traditional German names is “stairway to heaven”. I realise that since Led Zeppelin and the guitarist Jimmy Page, the name has an alternative fan base in pop music. In the world of flowers, lily of the valley deserves it even more, as its finely spaced white flowers ascend like a stairway up the stem and have a truly heavenly scent.

It transports us heavenwards, so please tell me, you apostles of cow parsley, buttercups, daisies, yellow rattle, scabious, oxeye daisies: where are the scents lifting you to heaven in your patches of muddle on earth? In the next month meadowsweet has a moderate scent, but you will have to crawl through your beloved bugs and insects in order to detect it. Ragged robin, meadow cranesbill, wild carrot will leave you searching for it in vain.

Right now I am revelling in supreme scents, none of which ever wafts in wilded gardens. They are coming from mock orange blossom, lilies from China, selected honeysuckles and jasmine from southern Europe. All these plants are old friends, simple to grow and the unbottled essence of a great British summer. If you already have them, enjoy reading about your wise choices. If not, you know what to plant next.

Mock orange, or philadelphus, blossom is a delight to insects, pollinators and humans alike. I have grown many of the varieties on offer, but still return to the first one I encountered, quite simply the best. Philadelphus Belle Etoile has a heavenly scent that some compare to tangerines. The flowers are profusely borne, white but stained centrally with a purple blotch. Branches of it make wonderful cut flowers, best in big vases confined to them alone. Florists never sell them but they scent an entire room.

Belle Etoile was bred in 19th-century France, that source of so many fine garden plants, and is extraordinarily easy to grow. It reaches about 6ft in height and 6ft in width. Its scent is unsurpassed, especially on a summer evening when it releases it more strongly as the air cools after a warm day, the best time for scented gardens.

There are three points worth remembering. Belle Etoile does not do too well in dry shade, where the small flowered Philadelphus coronarius is the better choice. It is also not at its best in dry, hot conditions. It should be pruned only in July directly after flowering. If you cut it in winter or early spring you will spoil its summer season, because it flowers only on growth it has made since its previous flowering.

The third point was particularly evident this year. Philadelphus can suddenly be afflicted with aphids in late spring and early summer. They cluster on the tips of the young stems and in one night cause them to go dark and become wrinkled. One hard spray with a hose will usually wash off the culprits and their eggs. The attack is shortlived and though the plant looks about to go into retreat it never does. New growths power on beyond the bug-infested pieces and by July they are forgettable.

This weekend, scented lilies mean regal lilies above all others, the ones with those white trumpets marked with a purple flush on their exteriors. These superb lilies are wonderfully easy to grow in pots, in which they can be set on either side of the main entrance to a house and left to scent every exit and entrance, smelling cool and rich at the same time.

Bulbs cannot now be ordered until next early spring, when they should be planted in ordinary garden potting compost, no acidity needed. Plant them with about 3in of soil above their tips and then give them 3ft-long bamboo canes to support them. When they are about 1ft high, begin to feed them on liquid phostrogen. The trick is to continue feeding them on their way down after flowering. Prolonged feeding greatly improves flowering this year and next.

On the longest evening, June 21, I sat outdoors till dark and blessed my swaths of honeysuckle. A form of this scented beauty is native to English hedgerows but it never turns up in lists for wilded areas. The better varieties are selections such as the lovely pale Graham Thomas, early flowering and highly scented, and my two mainstays, the early and late Dutch honeysuckles: look for Lonicera periclymenum in the lists, belgica being the early one and serotina being the late one.

They will climb up walls if wired but I also grow them in a style well suited to small gardens. I select one main stem and cut off all others on a newly bought plant. I then isolate this stem, giving it a very solid cane as a support and cutting off all competitors until it is about 4ft high. Then I let it develop a head of side growths and I continue to prune them to keep the plant to about 5ft.

The result is a small semi-standard feature, maintained by pleasant clipping throughout the summer. The flowers, picked or not, smell exquisite first on the early plant, then the late.

Here is an invaluable honeysuckle for north walls and all but the darkest shade: Lonicera japonica halliana, a winner from Japan. It will either grow flat on the ground, covering a multitude of sins, or it will race up a shaded wall on a backdrop of netting fixed on wires. This honeysuckle’s flowers open creamy white, then turn yellow, and their scent is intense, transforming the neglected back wall of a house.

It is a rapid, infallible climber but the trick is to know that it can be cut right down in late autumn to a height of only 2ft-3ft, stopping it from becoming a tangled mess.

Jasmine means white jasmine, scented from heaven in high summer. In most of Britain, the one called Jasminum officinale Grandiflorum (or affine) is the safest bet, surviving any winter and growing up to 12ft even on a lightly shaded wall, the best site for it. A newish variation called officinale Clotted Cream flowers longer and is even more conspicuous but not quite so hardy.

On walls in warm London or Mediterranean bolt-holes, the winner is polyanthum, the one we buy, forced, for Christmas indoors. Outdoors it is heaven on green legs.

If you have all these scented wonders in your garden, well done: celebrate them with me this weekend. If not, go and try to sniff the seed-heads on your wilded cow parsley. After sneezing, see sense and buy this foursome on the stairway to heaven.

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