Fragrant fall flowers perfume our landscapes and attract beneficial pollinators. As summer heat fades, the lovely scent of flowers can help ease the transition to the cool season. You can encourage many plants to rebloom by deadheading them, helping flowers last until the first frost.
Vines, roses, and other shrubs are useful additions to the landscape to provide dimension, color, and delightful aroma as the seasons change. Many plants that bloom in fall have been developed specifically to put out flowers later in the season. These are wonderful options to extend the color show and provide some sweet scents to the garden.
Choosing the right fragrant fall-blooming plants will freshen the air and continue the glory of the growing season long past the dog days of summer. Here are some of the loveliest choices for an aromatic autumn garden.
Best Fragrant Fall Plants
When selecting fragrant garden plants that bloom in fall, consider diversity in your choices. You might simply want perennials, but if you combine these with bushes, trees, and vines you can create a lush, layered garden. Vary sizes and plant taller specimens at the back of the landscape to allow more diminutive species room to shine.
1. Roses
Roses are a cornerstone of the flower lover’s garden. While most varieties are known to bloom in spring and summer, you can encourage blooms by consistent deadheading. Many different types of roses are known for their gentle perfume, use as a cut flower, and various colors and sizes.
For fall roses, select a continuous bloomer like ‘Louise Clements’, ‘Carefree Wonder’, or ‘Coral Dawn’. These repeat bloomers will last until the first freeze. ‘State of Grace’ is another outstanding fall-blooming rose that begins as a dark pink bud and unfurls to unveil sunset colors of coral, pink, and gold with a spicy, fruity fragrance.
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2. Joe Pye Weed
Far from a weed, Joe Pye weed is a desired plant with an impressive stature and spires of clustered purple blooms. This plant is one you should cut back either in fall after the leaves have dropped or in early spring before new growth begins.
From spring until late summer, Joe Pye just grows and grows, with some cultivars reaching 6 feet (1.83 m) in height by the time blooms open. This North American knockout native flower boasts vanilla-scented blooms that attract pollinators, including monarch butterflies, making it ideal for the butterfly garden.
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3. Dianthus
One of the sweetest fragrant autumn flowers, dianthus or pinks, looks like a miniature carnation and bears a similar clove-like scent. The spicy aroma is strong when the pink, red, white, and variegated blooms are open.
There are several sizes of dianthus plants, which will bloom until frost with frequent deadheading. The lowest growing varieties are excellent in rockeries, while the taller types make wonderful cut flowers. The thin, almost grass-like foliage is an excellent compliment to many other species of plants.
Explore a variety of sweet dianthus plants from the Home Depot.
4. Phlox
Phlox is a well-known scented flowering perennial. Several types, such as garden phlox (Phlox paniculata), bloom start blooming in midsummer and continue all the way into fall. You can encourage other this kind and others to keep blooming into the cooler season by cutting off spent flowers.
There are different phlox varieties that come in colors of white, lavender, pink, purple, and red. Garden phlox can grow between 2-4 feet (.6-1.2 m) tall and the thickly populated flower stems make beautiful and fragrant cut flowers.
5. Sweet Autumn Clematis
Every clematis is a lovely addition to the garden, but sweet autumn clematis is especially lovely. It provides delicate, pure white, vanilla-scented flowers each fall. The blooms have a starry appearance and start to arrive in September until the first frost. The leaves are leathery, pointed, and glossy.
This plant will need an arbor or trellis since it can mature to 30 feet (9.1 m) long. Unlike many clematis varieties, sweet autumn clematis is a relatively easy-to-grow vine with a heady scent that will perfume the whole garden. Be aware, though, that this prolific grower can become invasive in some parts of the southern U.S. because of its ability to reseed.
6. Agastache
When it comes to autumn blooming flowers, look no further than the glamorous agastache, also known as hummingbird mint. As the name suggests, this plant is irresistible to hummingbirds and an important late season food for these tiny pollinators during the great hummingbird migration.
‘Fall Fiesta’ agastache has been specially developed to produce the majority of its flowers in the later part of the season. This type of agastache can grow over 4 feet (122 m) in height and is adorned with deeply pink to orange tubular flower clusters.
Shop a wide variety of live agastache plants and seeds on Amazon.
7. Abelia
Abelia shrubs, especially the ‘Kaleidoscope’ cultivar, will provide an astonishing amount of scented blooms with a wonderful autumnal appearance. The creamy white flowers compete with the foliage that produces three seasons of color.
In spring, growth is green with red stems and the leaves turn gold for summer. In the fall, the leaves change to orange and red, coordinating nicely with the creamy flowers and pink buds.
Get a Kaleidoscope abelia today from the Home Depot for a lovely display that lasts all fall.
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