Wonderful photos! Does that Bracken Brown beauty Magnolia have a felty feel to the back of the leaves? What zone do you live in? It has to be great to be in a fragrant garden all the time. How long a period of time is your garden fragrant? Which fragrant plant to you enjoy the most?

Bracken's leaves do have some fuzz, but not like Little Gem. The tree is now over 20' tall. The fragrance season really lasts all year sometimes! In winter, I have wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) which begins in December and lasts through February. I also have Daphne bholua, and that also begins in December. I have it in a pot that I move into a barely heated garage when the temps get down into the low teens, but most of the time it sits on the patio. Snowdrops start in January, then sweet box in February, Japanese mahonia and Dawn viburnum in February-March, then hyacinths and other bulbs all spring. It's hard to choose a favorite, but if I had to, it would probably be the Daphne bholua or the plumeria Celadine.

My zone is 6B, Spokane, WA. My lows over the last 25 years at this house are -9F, -3F, -3F. All the other years have been above 0F.

Surprising, I thought you were going to say a much warmer zone. Do you grow some plants indoors?

The plumerias, jasmines, michelias, gingers, and oleanders, spend the warmer months outside and either come into the house (plumerias and michelias) or go in and out of the garage. I try to leave things outside as long as possible, sometimes into December, so they get hard before they go in to the garage. The B.B.B. magnolia and the other shrubs I mentioned are in the ground.

Wow, that is some collection of plants! You have your work cut out for you!! You must have a lot of muscles, moving all those plants around. ha ha. Beautiful!

Michael, what are you doing with a palm tree in the ground with temps that cold????/

And yes you must be built to carry so many inside and out every year! very nice plants. The night blooming Jasmine, does that come inside for the winter and how do you care for that? Does it get bugs, like mites?

The large windmill palms in the picture are in large black plastic nursery pots. I have strings of incandescent miniature lights taped around the pots, and then fiberglass roofing insulation, and finally plastic sheeting to keep the insulation dry. This set up prevents the soil in the pots from freezing, allowing the palms to stay outside during temperatures down into the single digits. If it gets colder than that, I move the pots under the eaves of the house and tent them. Once the cold snap passes, back out they go. About one out of three years they spend the whole winter outside. I have a waggie (Trachycarpus wagnerianus) planted on the other side of the house, and I use the lights and burlap to protect it when it needs it. The night jasmine spends the winter in the garage. It can freeze in there sometimes, but these have recovered from 26F. They get chopped back hard in spring. Cestrum parqui seems stem hardy down below 20F, and can come back from the roots from much, much lower. I planted one this spring to give it a whirl!

Waggie

Windmills. The one on the left is actually slightly taller than the one on the right, which sits on a block. The pergola with the hummingbird feeder is 8' tall.

Michael, I assume you are in Spokane Washington, it looks like Florida there!! [g]. Is that Winchester Honeysuckle very fragrant?

Spokane (at least the South Hill) is situated in a pine forest, so in some respects, it does resemble the Southeastern U.S.

Winchester honeysuckle is not only very fragrant, but it is far more mildew resistant than Peaches & Cream, which seems to have taken its place in the trade.

I did notice the pine tree in your photo and it did remind me of parts of Florida where there aren't palm trees. It's a nice affect.

Oh, that's too bad about that Honeysuckle. And isn't it always the way that 'progress' sometimes is giving up on something that worked great. [g].

I had a very fragrant Honeysuckle that I needed to move and for some reason instead of moving it I threw it out, thinking I would just buy a new one. Two purchases of the same named variety later, no fragrance. It was a good lesson to learn. It's not easy to find a good fragrant honeysuckle, I've discovered. Smart to hold onto yours. I'm not usually a fan of new hybrids.