Smelly Plant of the Month: Helichrysum angustifolium

Also known as Everlasting or Immortelle. Aka "Scaredy-Cat Plant" and "Curry Plant". It does not scare cats away, and rabbits love the smell. It would taste awful in a curry, though it's not poisonous. It IS used in perfumery, and it does smell heavenly. Like celestial maple syrup.
It can be grown in Zones 8b to 11, and it's from the Mediterranean. It's a bushy, tough perennial, and very nearly succulent. On warm days, the perfume from the leaves, and particularly the yellow, fluffyball flowers is very strong and some say, can make you sleepy! You can dry the flowers, or distill them.

I was delighted to find one at our local nursery, I've never seen them sold before. Now I'm huffing its beautiful scent constantly. A famous perfume that features immortelle is Sables by Annick Goutal. It pairs well with spices like cinnamon and mace, and woods such as sandalwood. What a find for a smelly garden!

Fascinating Video on Vetiver

I have a number of vetivers in my collection, and I grow it, so I was pleased to see Aura Cacia (they sell essential oils and blends) has a mini-documentary on the growing and harvesting of vetiver on the island of Madagascar. Madagascar vetiver has a soft and warm, nutty profile, with some lovely dark chocolate undertones and a whiff of smoke. Really nice. Here's the link to the short video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OISG1gzdthk
Disclosure:  I don't work for Aura Cacia and I received nothing from them for mentioning the video, too bad for me!

One Tough Ginger

Variegated shell ginger, aka Alpinia zerumbet, was the only ginger on sale at our local, privately owned (not big box) nursery. It is not Culinarily Acceptable, it’s a decorative ginger, but I wanted a ginger in my garden, so I bought it. About 12 months ago. It was bigger then.

In my neck of the woods, if you can’t stand 100kph winds and salty, corrosive sea spray on a weekly basis, you’re toast. Plants that survive here are tough customers.

Poor ginger. We had 2 tropical storms hit last summer, and it barely survived. I put up this little plastic headstone after Halloween as an ironic commentary on gardening on windswept sand dunes…and ginger grew! Turns out the headstone acts as a windbreak and now ginger looks like any other native plant- windswept, brown around the edges, close to the ground, and TOUGH as nails! I think it will survive this year’s storm season. GIP (Grow In Peace), Gingy!

Vetiver Harvest

First (very small) Vetiver Harvest!

My little 8" bundle of vetiver plants from Alberto at Agriflora Tropicals is now about 4 feet tall and 6 months old! The poor plants were becoming quite rootbound, so I felt it was time to divvy then up, put some in the garden to grow freely, and the others in a bigger pot with fresh soil. I didn't want to kill any part of the plant in order to harvest the fragrant roots, and the roots are too young yet, anyway. Or so I thought.

But there were so many roots at the bottom of the pot that I had to trim them off while repotting, so I rinsed them and dried them. Young though they are, they smell fabulous! Real vetiver, hard to beat that in the summer heat. I'll be making a sachet out of these....