Rediscover the Joy of Being Present
It’s no surprise that I’ve taken a small break from writing and a small step back from social media because my mental health has been a bit foggy. I still post often, but not as regularly as in the past. I used to document every second and share it on social media. Then, the pandemic happened…life happened…and it all put things into perspective for me.
I’ve discovered that I truly love arranging flowers, hosting friends, interior design, reading, and cooking with my husband (more like, accompanying him to the kitchen). Being present means doing something that aligns with you, and while I love my job, there’s something so refreshing about stepping back from digital life and focusing on the smallest things – the faint scent of a candle, setting the table, festive gatherings with girlfriends, sipping a hot toddy while reading a good book, or rearranging my bookshelves.
When asked what gift I wanted to give this holiday season, I immediately thought, “the gift of being present.” Small reminders to help others think, feel, smell, and witness… More than ever, it’s important to be connected to yourself and loved ones, which means putting the phone down to embrace each moment to the fullest because life is precious and so short. It’s easy to miss when you’re constantly plugged in.
The Power of Scent
Everyone knows scent churns up the greatest memories and is considered one of the strongest senses. So I want you to imagine yourself lighting a candle in your space, enveloped by the smell of fresh pine and white fir while you cozy up thinking about memories of being a child playing in the snow or putting up your Christmas decorations. One of my fondest memories as a child was dancing in the Nutcracker, so when I smell brisk peppermint and warm vanilla, I’m immediately transported backstage watching the Sugarplum Fairy dance in awe. Let’s not forget how soothing eucalyptus and sage can be on a quiet, cold night while you briefly close your eyes in the bathtub or how hints of holly berry and cardamom help conjure up simple home-cooked meals…but when combined with fresh tulips, evoke the most sensational holiday scent.
To me, a gift that encourages loved ones (myself included) to slow down, be present and reflect on the small things is far more valuable than a new cashmere sweater you (might) toss out next season or a bottle of champagne your friends already have in their bar cart. It also helps set the tone for the upcoming new year, which I’m calling “The Year of Intention!” A gentle reminder to view life through a finite lens every time things get hard.
Discover the Beauty of Artisanal Candles
One of my newfound discoveries is L’or de Seraphine, an artisanal home fragrance brand crafting the most beautiful (and aromatic) candles I’ve seen (and smelled)! Their wax is sustainably sourced (a slow and clean burn free of parabens) and their vessels can be repurposed into vases and containers that feel both elegant and edgy. Their latest collection, the Félicite Collection, has every size candle you can imagine, and the price points are very reasonable given their luxury touch and adorable gift boxes.
But perhaps the best part of L’or de Seraphine is their timeless approach to design. Their holiday candle collection is designed to look seasonless so that you can leave your candle out as long as you like while it seamlessly blends into your decor year-round. If you love pine as much as I do, you’ll adore this collection.
Sure, this holiday season feels different. Unlike others, I’m not filling my schedule with work events or overdoing my holiday decorations. I’m doing just enough so that I can relax and refocus going into 2022 – something I’ve needed to do for quite some time.
Xo, Stephanie
PS: Find L’or de Seraphine at Bloomingdales and Nordstrom near you or at lordeseraphine.com.
Fragrant Plants for Your Sensory Delight
When selecting plants for a fragrance garden, you’ll find spectacularly scented shrubs, perennials, bulbs, annuals, and—of course—herbs. Before you begin shopping, take a moment to plan your garden, choosing fragrant plants that bloom at different times throughout the year for a succession of scent through the seasons. You’ll enjoy sweet scents all season long with a little planning.
Roses: The Eternal Favorites
Shakespeare certainly wasn’t the first person to immortalize the fabulous fragrance of roses, and gardeners throughout the centuries adore adding these aromatic beauties to their landscapes—and vases. For a while, as breeders worked to create disease-resistant roses, fragrance took a back seat to healthy foliage. Luckily, today’s roses combine the best of both worlds: good disease resistance with delicious, old-world scent. Look for varieties like citrus-scented California Dreamin’ Hybrid Tea Rose, the peony-shaped blooms scented with hints of apple and champagne of Parfuma® Earth Angel, or the dark red, sweetly scented Brindabella Crimson Knight rose. Truly, you’ll find hundreds of beautifully fragrant varieties to grow.
Gardenias: Southern Charm in a Flower
During the Gilded Age, gentlemen wore gardenia boutonnieres, and the scent of gardenias famously floats through southern yards, as gardeners sip sweet tea on porches. For an early, double variety with 4- to 5-inch blooms that continue throughout the growing season, try First Love®. While many gardenias balk at temperatures outside of zones 8-11, Fool Proof™ tolerates the cooler climate of zone 7. If space is an issue, you’ll love the compact, mounding Buttons gardenia. Only 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide, the reblooming beauty makes a terrific addition to containers.
Daphne: Heavenly Scents in Small Packages
Lovely in landscapes, many daphne varieties perform well in containers for a heavenly-scented patio or porch. Variegated Winter Daphne boasts white blooms with a pink blush and pretty foliage with yellow margins. Eternal Fragrance Daphne produces profuse clusters of blush pink flowers over many months for long-lasting fragrance in the garden. The compact variety works well in urban gardens and containers. The pretty golden variegated foliage of ‘Gold Dust’ Daphne brightens semi-shady gardens and produces highly fragrant pink spring flowers. A compact shrub, it’s ideal for small space gardens.
Fragrant Favorites for Every Garden
Lilacs: The Scent of Nostalgia
Until recently, only gardeners living in colder zones could recreate those sweet memories. Fortunately, breeders took pity on southern gardeners, creating lilac cultivars that perform beautifully even in warmer climates, such as ‘Josee’, a small, reblooming lilac with the widest hardiness range, growing well in zones 3-9. Plus, while lilacs often battle powdery mildew, newer varieties offer good disease resistance. Compact, mildew-resistant New Age™ Lavender Syringa makes a perfect low-maintenance addition to small gardens. Today’s lilacs also come in a wide range of colors: red, pink, blue, yellow, cream, white, and even picotee. For a compact, reblooming pink variety, try Bloomerang™ Dwarf Pink Lilac. It grows only 2 to 3 feet tall and wide, blooms profusely in spring, and then continues to produce fragrant pink blooms throughout summer.
Sweetshrub: A Native Delight
The fragrant blooms smell like citrus, banana, strawberry, pineapple, bubblegum, or even gin, depending on whom you ask, plus the shrub grows beautifully whether planted in full sun or deep shade. Native plant lovers will adore Green Thumb Award winner Sweetshrub Simply Scentsational®, a cultivar hardy in zones 4-9. Deep maroon blooms appear in spring throughout summer, smelling like pineapple or bubblegum. ‘Venus’ produces large shows of clear white, magnolia-like blooms with a banana fragrance in early summer.
Viburnums: Versatile Fragrance
Traditionally used as a specimen plant or a hedge in the landscape, new cultivars offer a variety of sizes. Illuminati Tower® grows in a columnar habit with a unique 4-sided “tower” effect, producing hundreds of fragrant white flowers in early summer. Reaching only 3 to 4 feet tall and 1.5-feet wide, it’s ideal for narrow spaces. Compact ‘Snow Dwarf’ grows only 2 to 3 feet tall and produces pure white, double flowers with fabulous orange-blossom fragrance, perfect for small gardens. With so many varieties available, you’re sure to find the perfect fragrant viburnum for your garden. Sweet Talker® produces hundreds of pink, trumpet-shaped flowers with a spicy, honey scent in late winter/early spring. The plant provides good extended seasonal interest, with the leathery evergreen leaves turning purple-burgundy in fall. With its upright, vigorous growth reaching up to 7 feet tall, ‘Spice Girl’ Koreanspice viburnum makes a gorgeous hedge or specimen plant, with its spicy-sweet pink blooms in mid-spring and bright-red autumn foliage. Or, if space is an issue, choose ‘Baby Spice’, a compact form of its big sister.
Angel’s Trumpet: Exotic Enchantment
Commonly known as Angel’s Trumpet, this exotic, long-lived woody perennial can reach the size of a small tree, depending on the variety, and perfumes the garden with fragrance from its trumpet-shaped blooms. Many brugmansia flowers are especially fragrant on warm summer nights, so place it where you can enjoy the scent. The 6-inch to 24-inch hanging blooms may be white, cream, yellow, peach, orange, pink, or red, depending on the variety. ‘Charles Grimaldi’ is an old-fashioned favorite, with golden blooms that turn orange-salmon when mature. ‘Cypress Gardens’ makes an ideal container plant, with white flowers fading to pale salmon. The blooms are most fragrant in the evening. ‘Inca Sun’ is a hybrid that flowers continuously throughout the summer. All brugmansia need protection from frost, so bring them indoors if you live in a cool climate.
Jasmine: The Night Bloomer
The pretty vine with star-shaped white flowers and dark green foliage looks lovely covering a wall, trellis, or arbor, or use it as a gorgeous groundcover. A tender perennial hardy in zones 8-11, plant it in a container and bring inside in cooler zones. Or for a lovely addition to a moon garden, try Arabian Jasmine. The lush foliage of this vine contrasts beautifully with the intensely fragrant, petite white flowers that open at night and close in the morning, fading to pink as they age. Not only is it intensely fragrant, but pollinators adore the blooms. Plant it where you can savor the scent, and watch hummingbirds enjoy the flowers, too. Scensation produces lemony-cream flower clusters, contrasting beautifully with the deep-green deciduous foliage. ‘Harlequin’ is a non-invasive, fragrant vine with pink and white flowers against variegated green foliage.
Beloved Blooms for Fragrant Gardens
Dianthus: The Spicy Pinks
Commonly known as “pinks,” the name refers to the frilly edges of the petals, which look like they’ve been cut with pinking shears, rather than the color of the flower. In fact, dianthus can be found in a variety of colors, from powder pink to nearly black. ‘Firewitch produces vivid violet-rose blooms with a spicy clove scent. Large, showy double pink flowers with white edges adorn Fruit Punch® ‘Raspberry Ruffles’. Scent First™ Raspberry Surprise’s strong stems prevent flopping, while the highly fragrant, double pink and burgundy flowers make a brilliant border with this compact plant.
Phlox: The Pollinator’s Delight
While there are many types of phlox, tall garden phlox, or Phlox paniculata, makes a popular choice for perennial beds, with its tubular flowers that entice pollinators. Colors range from white, pink, magenta, purple, and blue, and the scented flowers make a sweet addition to your fragrance garden. Newer introductions, like LUMINARY™, provide good vigor and powdery mildew resistance. For a more compact variety that’s good for containers and small spaces, try the Sweet Summer® series–fragrant, early-flowering plants with good disease resistance that reach only 1-1/2 to 2 feet tall.
Lavender: The Aromatherapy Star
A star in aromatherapy, lavender also looks lovely in well-drained garden beds and containers, plus the flowers add both beauty and fragrance to bouquets. But not all lavenders smell alike: look for some of the most fragrant cultivars for your garden, like Lavandula angustifolia Thumbelina Leigh or ‘Hidcote’ or ‘Munstead’. All three varieties are popular among perfumeries. An added benefit to including lavender in your fragrance garden: it’s edible, perfect for your culinary creations.
Peonies: The Fleeting Belles
Although the blooms only last a few weeks, they’re worth it—ruffly, sweetly-scented belles of the ball that makes a stunning appearance in spring then disappear, leaving you wanting more. While some peonies require an up-close sniff to enjoy their scent, others share their fragrance from across the garden. Try ‘Hermione’, ‘Bowl of Beauty’, ‘Henry Bockstoce’, and ‘Duchesse de Nemours’—some of the most fragrant varieties.
Freesias: The Early Season Delights
Pick your favorite colors, then plant them along a walkway, as a front border in flower beds, or in containers. Don’t forget to save a bulb or two to force in the winter for fabulous indoor fragrance. Available in many colors, all freesias are fragrant, although some gardeners think the single, white varieties offer the most intense scent. Look for ‘Matterhorn’ and ‘Tecotote White’.
Lilies: The Scented Beauties
The pretty white blooms smell delightful even across a garden bed, adding early season scent to your fragrance garden. While some lilies offer no scent, others exude an overpowering, unpleasant fragrance, so choose lilies wisely. However, the right lilies can add gorgeous perfume to your garden and also look lovely in vases. Look for oriental lilies like ‘Casa Blanca’, ‘Stargazer’, and ‘Dizzy’; orienpets such as ‘Flashpoint’ or ‘Scheherazade’; or species lilies like ‘Album’, Coral Lily, or Golden-Rayed Lily. Tuberose produces clusters of large, white, or pink blooms on 4-foot tall plants, making them a popular cut flower, too. Add these highly fragrant flowers to perfume your garden—and your bouquets.
Peacock Orchid: The Exotic Delight
But Gladiolus callianthus ‘Murielae’—commonly known as Peacock Orchid–-adds delightful perfume, as well as beautiful orchid-like white flowers with merlot centers.
Annuals for Easy Fragrance
Don’t worry: there are plenty of annuals with intoxicating fragrance you can grow in your garden. You’ll find annuals available at your local garden center, or you can also simply scatter seeds early in the growing season to sow your own fragrant blooms. For an easy, low-maintenance, sweet smelling garden, try annuals like Nicotiana, Sweet Peas, Night-Scented Stock, Sweet Alyssum, or Moonflower. This plant has a profusion of brightly bicolored blooms in a citrus orange and sunshine yellow, with a fresh springtime fragrance. It is best used in hanging baskets or containers with partial shade. The plants will flower nonstop from spring through autumn for a full season of scent.
With so many fragrant options to choose from, you’re sure to find the perfect plants to create a sensory delight in your garden. Whether you opt for classic roses, exotic brugmansia, or cheerful annuals, the scent
