FRAGRANT BLOOMS HERALD FALL IN SOUTHERN GARDENS

The joke about autumn in the south is that the season is “summer with pumpkins.” 

Tea olives in bloom.

This was surely true in 2019, when oppressive heat persisted into November, testing our stamina and postponing typical fall-season garden tasks like the dividing of perennials and bulb-planting. However, we were lucky in the upstate this year (if any event can be truly considered ‘lucky’ which occurred in 2020…): the first official day of fall ushered in cool, dry weather that we are likely to keep until the jet stream shifts northward later this week. 

For me, autumn doesn’t truly begin in September, however. It begins on the day in early October when, walking to or from my porch, I am met by a fragrance that is as elusive as it is intoxicating. This perfume means that the tea olives are blooming.

I caught on early in my southern gardening career to the excellent properties of the tea olive shrub, and while I can’t pinpoint exactly where I saw (and more importantly, smelled) Osmanthus x fortunei for the first time, I’m guessing that it was probably at the J. C Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh NC where I volunteered in the days when Dr. Raulston was still alive. He could always be located in the garden by the smell of his cigarette smoke while he dug, pruned, fertilized and planted, only occasionally pausing long enough to lean against the handle of his spade and appreciate the fruits of his labors. 

My fragrant privacy screen.

That is almost certainly where I also learned about the importance of privacy screens in urban and residential gardens, seeing hollies, conifers and laurels employed to define garden rooms and block unwanted views. That's because shortly after leaving Wake County when my husband’s job necessitated a move, I planted a screen of tea olives on our lot-line in a suburb of Charlotte. I needed to block the view of our neighbor’s driveway and garage from our living room windows which overlooked them, and I felt they’d serve nicely as a backdrop for the two-bed parterre I laid out on that narrow side-yard. The beds were edged with fast-growing ‘Wintergreen’ boxwood and the large tubs centering each bed were planted with matching dwarf cherry trees. What I didn’t count on is how prodigiously large those little evergreen tea olives would grow in a few years’ time: by the time we moved to South Carolina twelve years after planting our Charlotte garden, they had grown into a dense hedge, fifteen feet tall, requiring constant pruning to keep under control. 

The view screened by the tea olives.

In my upstate garden I was confronting an even uglier view on our northern lot-line needing to be screened, and the tea olives have had considerably more room to spread out than did their predecessors. A decade in, the osmanthus I planted there have thrived splendidly despite the unsparing clay soil, preserving privacy for every north-facing window in our one-story cottage. The hedge is so tall and dense by now that I feel free to dress and undress in my bedroom without even drawing the curtains! And the bonus of that divine perfume when their tiny ivory flowers open in October is a highly anticipated pleasure in my fall garden.

One caveat about osmanthus that I’m obliged to pass along, based on my own experience: when buying the plants, and if you will be planting them in a hedge or grouping, insist on the nurseryman’s assurance that they are all botanically identical. Of the four young shrubs I bought from a North Carolina nursery near my home, one turned out to be a different variety than the others; I’m guessing that it could be the named cultivar, O. x fortunei ‘San Jose.’ It has grown more slowly than its companions and will probably always remain slightly smaller; also, the flowers open slightly later than the other three. Too late now, of course, but it’s taught me to be more discerning when I make a significant purchase.

 

Another member of the osmanthus family that grows well in shadier southern gardens is the holly-leaved tea olive with strikingly pretty foliage that is marbled green and gold: Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Goshiki.’ My specimen receives plenty of shade in a corner of the garden where it has grown slowly but steadily beneath a deciduous magnolia. I’ve been told that the holly-leaved tea olives also produce fragrant flowers in autumn but ‘Goshiki’ has produced nary a one for me in seven years so I’m not holding my breath. What it lacks in blossom it more than compensates for with its colorful spring growth and dense habit. I’m keeping it.

Ginger lily in bloom.

Ginger lily, or butterfly ginger as it’s sometimes called, seems to have grown in every southern grandmother’s garden at some time, because of the important role its fragrance seems to play in childhood memories for so many southerners. It’s not hard to understand why: when a stand of these tropical cane-leafed perennials throw out their white blossoms in late September, people and pollinators alike are drawn to Hedychium coronarium as if bewitched. There are many species and hybrids of Hedychium now on the market, with colored flowers in a whole range of sherbet colors and variations of fragrance. At one time I grew a hybrid variety that featured pink flowers and smelled like a grapefruit daquiri (it was possibly Hedychium x ‘Pink Flame.’) What I’ve discovered over many seasons, however, is that the tried-and-true species, the virginal white ginger plant, grows best for me and with the least fuss, being easily transplanted and not minding a bit of crowding. Just make sure that your ginger lily has rich, moist soil in which to grow, as well as full sun. Feed it heavily during the summer, until the flower stalks appear, and be prepared to stake up these heavy canes lest your flower show is all at ground level. 

The fragrance is a cross between grapefruit, pineapple and jasmine.

I’ve said before that our climate in South Carolina more closely resembles Kowloon than Cornwall, and this proves true over and over again. I’ve learned to avoid all the plant material I see thriving in the landscapes displayed in my beloved “English Gardens” magazine, while more often choosing plants that hail from southern China or other parts of Asia where humid heat and high rainfall totals resemble conditions here throughout our long summers. Ginger lily fits this bill.

Another mainstay in the southern garden that originated in Asia is the camellia. The earliest specimens in America are believed to be those brought to Charleston by French botanist Andre Michaux in the late eighteenth century. According to garden historian James R. Cothran, one of the original camellias given to plantation owner Henry Middleton by Michaux is still growing on the grounds of Middleton Place. The estate is open to the public, so if you go for one of the plantation’s popular camellia walks in late winter, you’re likely to see Michaux’ C. japonica ‘Reine des Fleurs’ in bloom: she’s a crimson beauty with white streaks.

To see a camellia blooming in October, however, you’ll need to look for C. sasanqua, the species that flowers once the days grow shorter and the air cools. It’s been wonderful to witness the explosion of sasanqua cultivars in the trade over the last couple of decades: I grow several varieties in my southern garden, with one of the best performers being C. S. ‘Crimson Candles.’ But usually the earliest sasanqua to bloom for me, and the one most anticipated, is the fragrant C. s. ‘Hana Jiman.’ From the forlorn-looking shrub I brought home several years ago she has grown into an upright, densely branched tree with exceptionally glossy, dark leaves that I value for their reflective quality in the shady bottom of my lower garden. 

The fragrant Camellia sasanqua 'Hana Jiman'

What I appreciate most about ‘Hana’ are the large single flowers of white that open in October. They have a crinkled, papery texture and the petal’s edges appear to have been dipped in pink dye. Bright yellow stamens extend from the center of each blossom, giving each flower the appearance of a ballerina wearing a wide tutu and sporting a golden tiara. It’s rare for camellias to have fragrance, but the perfume produced by the flowers of ‘Hana Jiman’ is exceptional, being a heady mixture of citrus and sandalwood. For this reason alone, I have many times congratulated myself for hauling the plant home from its woebegone spot in the nursery and planting it where I did. (We need these small triumphs, for so many times nature defies or disappoints us!)

Most roses have finished their show by October, and shed their leaves out of weariness, eager for frost and the long rest winter affords. But one shrub rose that keeps performing well into autumn in my garden is the old garden rose (OGR) ‘Perle d’Or.’ Catalogues claim that the rose will be 3-4 feet maximum at maturity, but because our growing conditions are so optimal in the southern garden, one always needs to take this information with a grain of salt when estimating the potential size of a shrub, tree or perennial. In the sunny bed on the south-eastern quadrant of my upper garden, Rosa ‘Perle d’Or’ is easily six feet tall and wide, and would grow larger if given the chance. I have to keep cutting away at her girth to maintain access to the path that skirts the bed, for Miss Pearl has formidable thorns and I have been impaled more times than I can count. Why do I keep such a lethal plant, you ask? It’s because of her flowers, naturally, which bloom in abundance from April through to November. 

Rosa 'Perle D'or' is a fragrant workhorse, but watch the thorns! 

‘Perle’ is an old cross between a multiflora and a tea, so her apricot-colored buds are borne candelabra-style on long stems, and open to paler pink, strappy-petalled blossoms that bear a rich tea fragrance. The flowers look wonderful in autumn bouquets (as do those of another antique tea I used to grow, Rosa ‘Mrs. B. R. Cant,’ an equally big shrub with flowers of deep carmine pink). The buds are lovely when displayed individually in finger vases.

With the weather so beautiful, my husband and I have been taking our afternoon coffee out to the garden. The covered swing at the top of the upper garden is our favored place, because of the vista it provides of the garden changing inexorably with the seasons. Autumn has ushered in the deepening purple berries of our enormous Callicarpa americana shrub, or beautyberry. It has generated an explosion of growth in the patch of blue-flowered Mexican petunia growing nearby, and the season's mild temperatures have supported an ongoing profusion of scented moonflowers on the vine that covers one arbor.

 

Scented moon flowers open at night.

Anticipating the frost, this is is also the season when garden spiders weave myriad webs – you need only to have read ‘Charlotte’s Web’ in childhood to know that spiders get busy weaving at the end of summer. They are feeding and gaining strength in order to lay their eggs in a sac that will outlive them, and will hatch out in the spring. This is what all the mama spiders are doing in the Mexican petunia, among the stalks of Salvia guarnitica ‘Black and Blue, and between the tall spires of Phlox paniculata, or summer phlox, that are hanging on to their white and lavender blossoms as long as they possibly can. 

Summer phlox is fragrant, with a light, spicy scent more detectable on warm days. This is why I appreciate the plants' proximity to the swing. The flowers are magnets for bees and butterflies, and for this reason I wait until the stalk ends are completely brown before cutting back.

Fragrant summer phlox.

Gardening this time of year is a heavenly indulgence after the beastly conditions of a southern summer. The only problem is that ordinary tasks take me twice as long: I’m always stopping to bury my nose in something delicious.

 

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Find other fall-blooming and fragrant rose varieties suited to southern gardens at the mail-order Antique Rose Emporium, https://antiqueroseemporium.com

The American Camellia Society maintains a nine-acre camellia garden in Fort Valley GA. For information and location of Massee Lane Gardens, access their website: www.americancamellias.com

Visit the extensive antebellum-style gardens at Middleton Plantation, north of Charleston on the Ashley River. Details at: https://www.middletonplace.org