Week of May 5

The Florida Garden continues to have new colors and shapes each week as the spring progresses to summer, but this week’s Blog will feature plants that not only look good but also smell good!  One week’s topic has already described orange blossom time, which has been ongoing for many weeks, with the Key lime tree just in flower now.  Another early fragrance has been the Bananna Bush, with creamy white flowers smelling like ripe bananas, growing next to the driveway and in the Palm Row.  Right now, we have four aromatic bushes in the backyard.  Ligustrums are large bushes with glossy leaves covered with clusters of white flowers with a soap-like smell.  Our flowering almond produces a wonderful smell like almond extract from dainty spikes of white flowers.  Growing over our side fence like a tidal wave is a confederate jasmine vine, with another sweet smell.  Finally, our large gardenia has erupted with so many flower buds that  it has branches in the ground and each flower is like a bottle of perfume.   So this Blog will not do justice to the smell of the Florida Garden- a multisensory joy!