Fragrance announces the shift in our seasons, alerting us to look more carefully for what has changed since the day before. Sometimes the fragrance is crisp and green or brown, but this week a languid sweetness called our attention to the first flowers opening on the Gardenia shrub that anchors the top of the path leading down into our lower garden.

Gardenias aren’t native to North America, preferring the more tropical conditions of the Pacific islands, Australia, southern Asia, and parts of Africa. There are more than 200 species of the lovely Gardenia, a division of the coffee family. Their shiny, evergreen leaves give this shrub presence even in winter.

Our shrub came as an impulse purchase one day when potted Gardenias were on display outside of Trader Joe’s grocery store. So I don’t know how large it will grow or anything more about it than it chooses to show us. I didn’t even know whether it would grow well here when I planted it, although Gardenias are common now further south of us and along the Atlantic coast. Gardenias are hardy in USDA Zones 7-11 and thrive in our humid summers. They prefer acidic soil, with their leaves sometimes turning yellow when the soil isn’t acidic enough for them. And they prefer evenly moist, organically rich soil.

This one grows exceptionally well, despite the billowing redbud tree growing above it now. We needed to prune out low-hanging branches of the redbud that were shading it earlier this spring. While Gardenias will bloom in dappled sunlight or partial shade, they won’t bloom well when completely shaded by the huge leaves of the redbud. And since the Gardenia grows a bit more each year, it appears there will be more pruning of one or the other in the months ahead.

Pristine, white and elegant, Gardenia flowers tend to fade all too quickly. And they fade first to beige and then to brown. The shrub can begin to look a bit shabby if one doesn’t pluck off those faded flowers every few days. But the flowers’ sweet fragrance remains, reminding one of a memory, or a wish, or a summer long ago…

As the first Gardenia flower of the season opened this week, so too did the first Rose of Sharon, Hibiscus syriacus flower open. Another harbinger of summer, these shrubs will bloom continually over the next 4-5 months, delighting both hummingbirds and butterflies. It also supports many types of bees, including the specialized Ptilothrix bombiformis bee. Each flower produces so many large, nutritious seeds that birds feed on them well into the following spring.

This is another shrub which grows so well here that it naturalizes, although it is native to China and Taiwan. They self-seed prolifically, leaving one with the choice to allow the seedling to grow, to move it, give it away, or simply weed it out. These shrubs first bloom at about 4 years old. Deer will graze their leaves, but they quickly grow tall enough to have the bulk of their leaves out of reach.

I potted up a half-dozen healthy seedlings that were growing in a container I was re-planting recently and will hope to give them away. This is another shrub that likes moist, acidic soil, that will bloom well in part sun or dappled shade, and is hardy in Zones 5-9. Rose of Sharon shrubs grow best when pruned fairly hard in early spring to encourage new growth and an abundance of flowers.

The first butterfly shrub, Buddleja, also bloomed this week. After watching buds develop for the past several weeks we quite suddenly are enjoying an abundance of flowers! Verbena bonariensis bloomed for the first time a few days earlier, beginning a long period of bloom for this hummingbird magnet association. This South American Verbena certainly pleases our butterflies, moths, bees, and hummingbirds and brings them into the garden. I first noticed the butterfly bush blooming when a Zebra Swallowtail was enjoying nectar from its first flower on Wednesday.

I started all of these butterfly shrubs from cuttings several years ago. The original mother shrub is long gone now, likely because it grew too shaded. These are likely varieties of the Chinese B. davidii, considered invasive in some areas. Sterile cultivars are available and perhaps my originals were sterile, though they produced seeds. I have never had a problem with seedlings. But I also cut away the spent flowers every week or two to encourage more blooms to appear throughout the summer. These flowers are also sweetly fragrant and the graceful shrub offers hummingbirds a variety of perches on which to rest.

Our winter was long enough and cold enough that many marginal perennials simply didn’t make it, or are very late to appear. So I was delighted to find the first traces of Salvia reappearing these past few weeks. We now have Salvia, though only a few have bloomed for the first time, as well as most of the Zantedeschia, or Calla lilies, from summers past.

I keep watching for other perennials to appear and am beginning to give up on many. But every ‘lost’ plant presents an opportunity to enjoy something else in its place. I spent some time this week re-doing pots of overwintered herbs since it is finally warm enough to plant Basil.

On Monday, I bought four favorite varieties of Basil at a local garden center that carries an outstanding selection of herbs. And I trimmed back a few longer stems from each pot to root in water. Then, I had to set about dividing the many crowded little plants growing in each pot. The grower obviously had sown a ‘pinch’ of seeds per pot, but never went back to thin the plants. So I was able to divide each of these pots, and also a pot of sweet basil I had picked up earlier at the grocery store, to deposit a bit of growing basil across a wild variety of pots near the kitchen door.

I grow the Basil each year, enjoy its beautiful leaves and flowers, and rarely cut it for cooking. But it is another wonderful fragrance to enjoy on warm days. I had already planted a selection of scented Pelargoniums and some culinary Salvia earlier this spring in some of the containers, and several containers hold herbs that overwintered from previous years.

The Basil will grow quickly now that warm weather has settled into our area. I’ll continue planting the cuttings here and there, wherever there is a sunny space for them, as they root. We can enjoy growing Basil, and other highly fragrant herbs, knowing that they won’t be grazed by four-legged ‘visitors’

We have been blessed with regular rain this spring and cooler temperatures mostly prevailed through the end of May and early June. But now that we are approaching mid-June, the weather is heating up and plants in the garden are responding with new growth and flowers.

But this final container of today’s ‘Six’ changes little from season to season and year to year. I seem to have hit on a ‘recipe’ for a container planting that features drought resistant, heat resistant, humidity resistant, and also cold resistant plants. While I add some Violas around the edges in the fall, and replace those with more succulents each spring, the Italian Santolina etrusca just gets better each year. It is actually a very forgiving and tolerant evergreen shrub, woody like rosemary or lavender, but with a beautiful bluish cast to its grey foliage.

I’ve never seen it bloom. It prefers full sun, but gets partial shade where it grows. But it grows happily with succulents and only needs a little trimming to tidy it up once or twice a year. It fits perfectly with the blue, purple and white flowers that predominate in our garden in early summer. The yellow daffodils and pink peonies are gone for another year. And now we are ready to settle into the summertime blues and greens of another hot and humid coastal Virginia summer.

With appreciation to Jim Stephens of Garden Ruminations, who

hosts Six on Saturday each week.