An English garden should be full of scented plants. Stephen Lacey's book, Scent in Your Garden gives the reader an easy-to-read but in-depth look at this sometimes forgotten topic. The reader gets lots of ideas on how to use scented plants in the garden, plus a list of over 1000 plants that are fragrant. I never thought there were that many!

Lacey starts with a description of why we don't always pay attention to scent when buying or placing plants. In his chapter on "The Nature of Scent" he talks about the different flower scents - both powerful and subtle, and scents that smell of vanilla, cloves, or almond.

Each chapter then covers a specific aspect of the garden, such as shrubs and trees, herbaceous borders, bulbs and annuals, walled gardens and climbers, rose gardens, rock gardens, water gardens and indoor plants. In short, no matter what kind of garden you have, you can have fragrance.

The full color photographs by Andrew Lawson are high quality and inspirational. They'll give you lots of ideas about how to lay out a garden with scented plants, and gorgeous planting combinations.

Cultural notes are given for each plant - such as sun, height, and hardiness zones.

English gardens are famous for their abundance of roses and in the chapter on roses you will learn which ones are the best to grow for scent.

There is always a place for herbs in an English garden and Stephen Lacey devotes a full chapter to the best scented ones and ways to use them in your garden.

I recommend this book if you want to add fragrance to your garden, and also to get design ideas. It would make a great gift for a gardening friend.

*Note: I got this book from the library and was not compensated in any way for this review.

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