Please
note: I no longer have a greenhouse business selling scented geraniums,
but this site has been so popular that I am leaving it up for your enjoyment.
Both papagenos.com
or logees.com sell
scented geraniums. Best wishes!
Have you ever rubbed a geranium leaf and smelled peach? How about one that smelled like Juicy Fruit gum, or lime? These scented plants are a sister to the geranium in the Geraniaceae family and technically are called scented pelargoniums. They boast all sorts of “flavors,” including such varieties as lemon-rose, ginger, chocolate mint, apple cider, pine, apricot, rose and eucalyptus to name just a few of the 600 varieties native to South Africa.
Not only do these delightful plants have delicious fragrances, they offer a medley of leaf shapes, textures and sizes. The peach variety has small, variegated leaves, while the chocolate mint has large, fuzzy, purple-splotched leaves, and the pine has small gray-green leaves which feel like velvet. Not only do scented pelargoniums offer wondrous aromas and diverse leaves, the flowers are special too! Some are small, almost violet-like in pastel shades from pink to lavender to white. One rose-scented variety, Mrs. Taylor, has fabulous bright red flowers which bloomed in my greenhouse just in time for Valentines Day! Other varieties have flowers which, in my opinion, beat out regular zonal geranium blooms. Clorinda, the eucalyptus-scented variety, has gorgeous bright pink blooms that astound with their brilliance!
These tender perennials make great garden plants and are best if they are placed where they will be brushed or touched often, releasing the fragrance. They excel as conversation pieces when planted in patio pots, and, if you keep them in pots, they are easy to take inside in the fall for winter flavor and color. If all this is not enough, you can also use the leaves and flowers in cooking! You can use the leaves to flavor jams and teas, cakes and frostings, sorbet and salad dressing! The blossoms can be used to decorate as violet blossoms do. Of course both leaf and flower are terrific for use in potpourri and tussie-mussies.
