LOL @ Robert! Fancy finding you here! I see that your obsession (I mean passion) for all fragrant plants are still going strong. ;) Ok so check this out... that one tiny almost opened blossom I picked off the tree and left in my kitchen, well as I said before it filled the room with sweetness. When DH came home... he was like "I closed all the windows why then do I still smell your flowers?" LOL... this is a man who couldn't tell a rose from a plumeria before he met me and now he's noticing fragrances! So as the night progressed... every so often he would look at me and updated me on the fact that he still could smell the sweet fragrance permeated in the air. My reply... I'm going back to buy another tree today! Granted these are HUGE trees, can grow to 25-30 ft BUT they are slow grower so I'm hoping to enjoy them until they get too big. I'll deal with that day when it comes. :) Now to answer your question... for the first 12 years of my life I grew up in Southeast Asia... before moving back to the East Coast in the States. So my childhood was filled w/ adventures, tropical plants and exotic fruits. You know how much I love my Plumeria babies... but I must say if I can only keep ONE plant, then without a doubt it will be my M. Alba. Thank you for the link... I will study it carefully. Luckily for me it's not hard to find M. Alba where I am. Now what else do you like that you can recommend to me? Let's hear it. :) Kemistry - glad to hear you had a chance to smell M. Alba! For some strange reasons, great scent make me very happy!

Wow, I haven't been here in a while! I know it's technically November, but I figured I'd cover all my bases by commenting how amazing everyone's pictures are and posting my own. Most of my plants are all tuckered out from the ridiculously hot summer here in Florida. Osmanthus isn't in bloom (maybe it's still too warm here? Crossing my fingers.) and neither are my roses. However, feast your eyes on these puppies: Oncidium 'Heaven Scent Sweet Pea': Got this one early this year in a bag from Lowes. I didn't think I'd get it to bloom, so this is an awesome surprise! The spike has been developing for a couple months... I can't wait for the buds to open! Oncidium 'Twinkle'! I've heard how notorious this one is, so I didn't have high hopes for it, either. These spikes have been developing for a couple months as well, and this is the FIRST one open! No scent yet, though. I'm pretty sure the secret is neglect (water once a week or so). They are in clear plastic containers with an orchid mix of bark, charcoal and pumice and sitting in a west facing window. I stick some of those orchid fertilizer spikes in there whenever I think about it (although I haven't done so in a few months since they've been in spike). I group them close together for humidity as well (they are on a plate with rocks that I used to fill with water, but I got lazy). My poor little artabotrys h. seedling is chilling next to them. He's hiding in the back of the first pic. I had two, but lost one after an unexpected dry spell this summer (along with my m. champaca, darn it!). I'm too scared to put him back outside for fear that I will neglect him again :(. Out of sight, out of mind is definitely true for me. Maybe once I stop being lazy and repot he will take his place out on the big, scary porch. Lol.

@fragrant2008 does your osmanthus fragrans has any scent? kew's webpage said it won't thrive or flower well at uk. but I am still going to try. I have the light yellow flower cultivar and I am going to get the orange flower and white flower cultivar to try. what does fortunei smells like? it's hardy at uk. I guess it will be easier to grow than fragrans? thank you for the photo. so the 5:1:1 mix is similar to orchid mix. it has very good drainage and it doesn't hold much nutrient in the "soil". you have to feed it weekly weakly like orchid? I love michelias. it has nice fragrant flower species. it's good that there are michelias species easy to grow at uk. I will add them to my wishlist even I don't have a garden yet. if one day I have a garden, I will grow all kind of delicious scent flowering tree and shrub include daphne and Chimonanthus praecox. right now, a fragrant leaf pandanus, a plumeria, an epiphyllum, a magnolia alba has take up a lot of my indoor space. I am trying to keep them small until I have a garden which I hope I can get in 3 to 4 years. which plumeria cultivar do you have? you had said it didn't smell much. has it improved or you find a better cultivar? I have a dwarf singapore pink because I heard it branch well and need less light. so it flower better. I don't know yet. I just start.

Mike and Jan - I somehow missed both of your above posts! Mike: My 511 started with the basic recipe and then I tweaked it a bit. I used composted pine bark (Agway brand) and I sifted everything below 1/8 and above 1/2. I was neurotic about picking out sap wood (no joke, I spent a month picking through 12 cubic feet of bark, one baking sheet at a time). Then I used peat, but substituted some earthworm castings in equal amounts. I used large perlite (but the bag really had a range of sizes, so I sifted out everything below 1/8). I deviated a bit because I added pumice in place of some of the perlite. In my research I found that pumice holds more water, plus it's heavier. At the time, I was really worried about them drying out so fast and I didn't mind the extra weight because of the wind. So, I split the perlite in half and used pumice for the other off. Overall it had the same proportion of ingredients, I just subbed some like with like. Once I potted them, I added some of the fines on top in an attempt to retain more moisture on the upper most level, but it ended up just mixing in. I wasn't too worried about it since I didn't include any fines and I know most people do include them. 5 parts composted pine bark, shifted to remove fines 1 part peat/worm castings 1/2 part chunky perlite 1/2 part pumice osmocote I have been seriously thinking about taking the 511 and mixing it with additional potting mix, to create a really barky mix, but something that acts much for like a traditional mix, but with the increased oxygenation of the larger chunky mixes. Jan - that Cara Cara is beautiful; it is basically the goal for all of my trees. I've never used wooden planter boxes. They look lovely, but I have no experience with them. Prior to the rootmaker pots, I exclusively used terracotta.