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Garden Sensations

By Nzong Xiong

Ever smell a flower and know you'll never forget its heady fragrance? Maybe you ran your hand over some leaves that left you pondering the texture?

Plants can stimulate our different senses for various reasons. They may have bold, exotic flowers to dazzle our eyes or fuzzy foliage for our fingers to touch.

Whether you garden in containers or flower beds, try growing plants that will excite your senses of taste, smell, sight, hearing and touch.

To give you some ideas, we asked Leonard Ichimoto, a Clovis nurseryman, and Pam Geisel, statewide coordinator for the Master Gardener Program at UC Davis, to suggest plants for each of the five senses. Other plant ideas are from Cindy Krezel's book “101 Kid-Friendly Plants” (Ball Publishing, $19.95).

All will grow in San Diego gardens; many are drought-tolerant.

Pink breath of heaven

SMELL

Pink breath of heaven (Coleonema pulchellum): An evergreen shrub with tiny pink flowers and “wispy foliage,” Ichimoto writes. “Brush up against it or pinch a stem and you get this wonderful fragrant scent. If women smelled this good, no man would be single.”

Gardenia (Gardenia augusta): An evergreen shrub with glossy bright green, lance-shaped leaves and intensely fragrant, single or double white flowers.

Sweet olive (Osmanthus fragrans): An evergreen shrub with oval, glossy medium-green leaves that can grow to 4 inches long. It has a “sweet apricot smell in late summer on tiny white flowers,” Geisel writes.

Chocolate flower (Berlandiera lyrata): This bushy perennial grows yellow blooms with red-striped undersides and chocolate-colored stamens. The flowers have a chocolate scent.

Lemon verbena (Aloysia triphylla): A deciduous or semievergreen shrub with lemon-scented foliage. “The lemon fragrance is clean, sweet and lovely,” Geisel writes. “One whiff and I predict you will not want to live without this luscious-smelling herb.”

TASTE

NANCEE E. LEWIS / Union-Tribune Pineapple guava.

Sungold cherry tomato: Orange-colored, cherry-size tomatoes that are the “best-tasting cherry tomato on Earth!” Geisel writes.

Chocolate mint (Mentha piperita cv.): This herb that smells like chocolate mint is “wonderful in lemonade or on chocolate desserts,” Geisel writes.

Pineapple guava (Feijoa sellowiana): The oval, grayish-green fruits are 1 to 4 inches long and have soft, sweet pulp flavored somewhat like pineapple. But Ichimoto likes this plant more for its blooms, which have white petals that are slightly purple on the inside, as well as red stamens. The edible flower petals are “sweet as sugar and can be put in salads or eaten off the tree,” he writes.

Society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea): Its bluish-green, narrow leaves and flower stems have an onion or garlic odor if cut or crushed. Leaves can be used in cooking.

Shiso (Perilla frutescens): Broad, ovate, deeply toothed leaves can get 5 inches long and be bronzy purple or green. Ichimoto remembers his grandmother growing this plant for pickling purposes. “It has a bitter taste, but (it) really makes Japanese ume (pickled plums or apricots) taste good,” he writes.

SEE

BOB WIGAND Angel's trumpet (above) and garden hydrangea (below).

Abelia x grandiflora 'Kaleidoscope': A compact shrub with variegated green, pink and yellow leaves and white flowers. The foliage “turns really red in winter,” Ichimoto writes.

Angel's trumpet (Brugsmansia): A large woody shrub that produces large pink, apricot or yellow bell-shaped blossoms that dangle like earrings. Fragrant, too.

Maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba): A deciduous tree with broad, fan-shaped foliage. “The ginko leaf is beautiful and elegant in shape with startling yellow foliage in the fall,” Geisel writes. “The tree is a great pest-free garden tree.” Avoid female trees that produce messy, smelly fruit.

Garden hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla): This shrub has thick, shiny, coarsely toothed leaves and bold clusters of white, pink or blue flowers, depending on the soil's pH. “Treat the plants with aluminum sulfate for dark blue flowers – a visual treat!” Geisel writes.

Coral bark Japanese maple (Acer palmatum 'Sango Kaku'): A vigorous, upright tree with yellow fall foliage. “In the winter, when the leaves are gone, the striking coral-pink branches really stand out,” Ichimoto writes.

HEAR

HOWARD LIPIN; CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-Tribune Palm trees (top) and bamboo.

Goldenrain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata): A deciduous tree that has showy 8-inch to 14-inch flower clusters in early to midsummer and seedpods in the fall. “When (the pods) rattle, they make an interesting sound,” Geisel writes.

Chinese lantern plant (Physalis alkekengi): A perennial often grown as an annual, it produces decorative, papery, 2-inch calyxes that resemble lanterns. “The lanterns rustle in the wind,” Geisel writes.

Bamboo: When the wind blows through a clump of bamboo, it creates a rustling sound, Ichimoto says. Choose the clumping, rather than running varieties that spread out of control.

Palm trees: “I love the sound of the palm tree leaves rubbing together in the wind,” Geisel writes. It “makes me think of paradise.”

Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora): A large evergreen tree that grows large, white flowers that are 8 inches to 10 inches in diameter. Smaller hybrids available. While the tree itself doesn't make any sound, what the blooms attract does. “The big white flowers in early summer are inviting to the bees,” Geisel writes. “Their buzzing when you walk under them is striking.”

TOUCH

Lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina): A perennial with dense, ground-hugging rosettes of soft, thick, woolly white leaves. Always a favorite with children.

Fiber optics plant (Isolepis cernua): A perennial that grows small brown flower spikelets at the ends of drooping, threadlike green stems. It “feels funny when you touch this marsh grass,” Geisel writes.

Flannel bush (Fremontodendron): An evergreen California native shrub or tree with leathery leaves that are dark green above and felted underneath. It has showy, yellow blooms. The leaves are “like sandpaper, really rough and stiff,” Ichimoto writes.

Cockscomb (Celosia): There are two main types: one kind of cockscomb has plumy flower clusters that look like tangled masses of yarn in shades of pink, orange, red, gold and crimson. The other kind has velvety, fan-shaped flower clusters of yellow, orange, crimson, purple and red.

Pussy willow (Salix discolor): A deciduous tree or shrub that grows 15 feet to 25 feet tall and 12 feet to 15 feet wide. The catkins of male plants are soft, silky and pearl gray.