Bring Delicate Fragrance To Your Spring Garden With These Colorful Flowers

Homeowners often consider how to make their gardens look beautiful, but scent is nearly as important. Just ask anyone who wonders why their compost heap is smelling ripe. Luckily, you can easily make your yard smell amazing by planting fragrant flowers and shrubs. Stock (Matthiola incana) is the perfect blossom for this mission. It releases a spicy scent reminiscent of cloves, attracting bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Plus, it's easy to grow from seed and comes in several vibrant colors, including pink and purple. Though it prefers direct sun, it will tolerate a few hours of daily shade, especially in the warmer areas of USDA hardiness zones 6 through 10.

Stock appreciates cool weather. If you plant it indoors, six to eight weeks before the frost is expected to end, its first blooms will greet you in the spring. To extend its flowering period, sow seeds every couple of weeks. Stock isn't a fan of hot conditions, so it often stops blooming in sweltering summer temperatures. This is especially true when the air is warmer than 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Since this plant is temperature sensitive, it's often grown as an annual in colder climates and a perennial in warmer ones.

Since stock can reach a height of 3 feet, consider planting it near shorter flowers and bushes. This creates visual contrast that can make your landscape pop. If you'd like its scrumptious scent to waft into your house, grow it in containers you can place near open windows. For sweet dreams, plant a related species called evening scented stock (Matthiola longipetala) near your home. This variety emits its fragrance at night.

Want to make the most of stock's delightful scent? Plant this flower in a fragrance garden, a collection of plants selected for their aromatic qualities. When designing this type of garden, think about how the scents of different plants will interact. Stock smells both sweet and spicy, so team it with plants that produce complementary fragrances. Dianthus has a vanilla-esque aroma that smells heavenly with stocks' clove-like notes. Or plant evening scented stock with other plants that perfume the air after dark. These include moonflowers (Ipomoea alba) and night scented phlox (Zaluzianskya ovata). Both prefer full sun, just as stock does.

Considering your plants' sunlight, soil, and moisture preferences is crucial no matter what kind of garden you're planning. A garden whose plants have similar needs is easiest to maintain. In addition to demanding soil with adequate drainage, stock prefers pH levels that are neutral or slightly alkaline. This is another reason dianthus is a good companion for stock. It appreciates the same kind of soil: well drained and slightly alkaline. Stock may be harder to grow near plants like azaleas, that crave acidic conditions. If the soil in your garden is naturally acidic, you can make it more alkaline by raising its pH level. To nurture your stocks and other garden flowers that love alkaline conditions, try adding baking soda to their soil to encourage blooms. Dissolving 1 tablespoon of baking soda in 1 gallon of water, then using this liquid to water your stocks may help if their soil is too acidic.