I'd like people to associate entering my house with nice smells. What should I plant to achieve this?

I have patio pots available, a little room in the ground by the front sidewalk, and a couple places I could plant climbing vines. I live in Central Texas, zone 8b, and the area is in full sun. I'd like things to bloom for a long time, partly because I want the fragrance to be there a long time.

What do you suggest?

Dewberry the shrubs and plants I think of first for fragrance are tea olive, gardenias, and white butterfly ginger. The tea olive( osmanthus fragrans)blooms in the spring and fall and you normally don't see the flowers until the wind catches the scent. It makes you swivel your head thinking where did that come from?!
August Beauty gardenias, if you deadhead old blooms it will rebloom.
Hedychium coronarium/or flavescens will bloom in Aug/Sept and continue to frost. Wonderful scent. The gingers are the only ones that I have potted and they will do fine. All of these plants are sun lovers.

Some other plants that have a wonderful fragrance are Rosemary and Lavender.

Scented Geraniums, Lilys, Tuberose

Night blooming jasmine!

An old gardening friend who used to have a nursery had Holy Basil plants on either side of the entrance, and said everyone wanted to buy it once they realized where the heavenly fragrance was coming from. I've grown it here, and though my sense of smell is not terribly reliable, I could definitely smell it—delicious! To me, it smells like basil meets juicy fruit gum, but way better than that sounds. Moonflowers, Evening Primrose, Flowering Tobacco, Sweet Almond Verbena and four-o'clocks also smell great, IMHO.

Heliotrope, Mignonette, sweet peas and night-scented stocks may or may not be suitable for warm-climate gardens, but are known as excellent plants for fragrance. I've tried growing scented geraniums that were given to me by a TX gardener, but I don't have the knack (or climate?) for keeping them alive.

Some of the most fragrant plants are night-bloomers trying to attract moths, so think a bit about what times of day people will be visiting your house.

Mock Orange if you have the room for one. https://www.monrovia.com/mock-...

Mock Orange is sublime

Paul2032 said:Mock Orange is sublime

Our native Mock Orange is Philadelphus inodorus, which is Latin for "fragrance? fuhgeddaboutit!".

It's pretty, and blooming now, but I have no idea what the famous mock orange fragrance is all about... maybe one day I'll find out.

I have this one @scvirginia: https://www.thespruce.com/mock...

Peggy8b said:I have this one @scvirginia: https://www.thespruce.com/mock...

That looks a lot like the native species, but I reckon it smells way better.

Virginia scented geraniums are very easy--but they need to go inside for Winter. Inside the plant loves florescence light----easy to propagate from cuttings. Just put the cutting in something (glass or plastic) that is clear--and put it under florescent light--roots will grow in 7-10 days--, transfer to soil--needs bright light-I love them! My great-grandmother used to have the whole patio filled with them. ---She lived in the Tropics--

tantefrancine said:Virginia scented geraniums are very easy--but they need to go inside for Winter. Inside the plant loves florescence light----easy to propagate from cuttings. Just put the cutting in something (glass or plastic) that is clear--and put it under florescent light--roots will grow in 7-10 days--, transfer to soil--needs bright light-I love them! My great-grandmother used to have the whole patio filled with them. ---She lived in the Tropics--

That's good to know. I'm not so great at 'indoor gardening', and am likely to kill anything that's very tender. I can bring things inside for brief spells of freezy weather, but if it needs to stay for more than a week, it's probably doomed.

for the good info,
Virginia

I now have an Arabian Jasmine that's fragrance really packs a punch. Wonderful! Also, I have roses and herbs.
I may plant some fragrant climbing roses and another Arabian Jasmine.

"Inodorous" means having no scent.

purpleinopp said:"Inodorous" means having no scent.

...and while we are at it; 'fragrance' is a noun not a verb.
"Plants to fragrance the front walkway", indeed.

Snark, out.

Uh-oh, I try to operate in a snark-free bubble. If it was perceived that what I said arose from snark, please know that it didn't.

My comment is trailing way behind, but was inspired by, "Our native Mock Orange is Philadelphus inodorus, which is Latin for "fragrance?" I didn't want anyone thinking this is what they should look for if they wanted a scented mock orange.

The nickname for that species is scentless M.O.:
Scentless Mock Orange (Philadelphus inodorus)

I'm not sure what one SHOULD look for because I made the same mistake when buying one about 20 yrs ago. I wanted scent and the flowers on the shrub I bought were unscented, and the comment about that species made me remember, and want to share so others reading this discussion wouldn't make the same mistake I did.

purpleinopp said:Uh-oh, I try to operate in a snark-free bubble. If it was perceived that what I said arose from snark, please know that it didn't.

Oh, no. I fully embrace my inner snarkiness. Grammar, spelling and vocabulary are inordinately important to me. I was commenting on my linguistic snarkiness, not yours.

This post put me in mind of one of the most erudite of fictional detectives, imminently re-readable even if light; Nero Wolfe. I paraphrase in quoting

"In this house, contact is not a verb."

"Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of a fit. It's complicated. There's a fireplace in the front room, but it's never lit because he hates open fires. He says they stultify mental processes. But it's lit now because he's using it. He's seated in front of it, on a chair too small for him, tearing sheets out of a book and burning them. The book is the new edition, the third edition, of Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published by the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. He considers it subversive because it threatens the integrity of the English language...."

And, as Wolfe was a famed orchid grower, it may even pass muster as a garden-related post.

Ohhh, that's perfect! I totally get what you said now. : + ) Thank you for helping me out. In casual conversation, I have abysmal grammar, and had no respect for it as a younger person. But as my job requires some formal writing, I appreciate characters like that and their sentiments because I often find myself in the ironic default position of being that person in the scenario. LOL!!

My original sentence did not say that inodorus was Latin for fragrance, however.

The sentence was:

Our native Mock Orange is Philadelphus inodorus, which is Latin for "fragrance? fuhgeddaboutit!".

I didn't anticipate people not reading the whole phrase or sentence, and thinking I said the opposite of what I did say. Snark fail.