A Fragrance Pot for a Balcony You Actually Sit On

Most balcony fragrance fails for a reason that has nothing to do with the plants. The pot ends up at the railing, where it looks best, and the chair is three feet away against the wall. Scent does not travel far outdoors, so the plant is perfuming the street and you are getting nothing.

A fragrance pot is a placement problem first and a plant problem second. Get the placement right and quite ordinary plants work. Get it wrong and nothing does.

Rule One: Put It Where Your Nose Is

Not where the pot looks good. Where you sit.

Within arm's reach of the chair is the target, and closer is better than further. Outdoors there is almost always some air movement, and even a light breeze thins scent to nothing within a few feet. Indoors a fragrant plant fills a room. On a balcony it perfumes a radius, and you want to be inside the radius.

Two placements that work better than the railing:

• On a small table or stool beside the chair, so the flowers are somewhere near seated head height rather than at ankle level. Scent at ankle level in moving air is scent you will not smell.
• Immediately behind or beside the chair against a wall. A wall or a corner cuts the airflow that carries the scent away, and a sheltered corner will hold fragrance far better than an open edge.

Work out which way the wind usually comes from and put the pot on the upwind side of your chair. This one adjustment does more than any plant choice on the list below. If the prevailing breeze runs across the balcony from the left, a pot on the right is being wasted.

Rule Two: Match the Plant to When You Are Out There

This is the second reason fragrance pots disappoint. Scent is not constant, and many of the most strongly perfumed plants are deliberately quiet during the day.

If you sit out in the evening, you want the night-scented group. These plants are pollinated by moths rather than bees, so they hold their fragrance back until dusk and then release it strongly. Night-scented stock, evening-scented tobacco plants and night-blooming jasmine all follow this pattern. It is genuinely dramatic: a plant that smells of almost nothing at four in the afternoon can be overwhelming at nine at night.

If you sit out in the morning or at lunch, that group is the wrong choice and you want day-scented plants instead. Sweet alyssum carries a light honey scent through the day and is one of the easiest container plants there is, which is why it already has its own guide in growing sweet alyssum in containers. Scented-leaf geraniums are the other reliable daytime option, and they work differently from everything else here.

Scented-leaf geraniums release scent when touched, not on their own. That makes them ideal directly beside a chair or along the edge of a path where you brush past them, and close to useless three feet away. If you like the idea of a plant that smells when you handle it, place it where your hand naturally falls. General container care for the family is in growing geraniums in pots.

Herbs belong in this group too. Rosemary, mint, lemon balm and basil are all touch-released, all easy in pots, and all more useful than most ornamentals because you can also cook with them.

Rule Three: One Pot, Not Five

The instinct is to buy several fragrant plants. It usually produces less, not more.

Different scents at close range compete rather than combine, and a strong night-scented plant will simply cover everything near it. A single generous pot beside the chair beats five scattered small ones, and it is easier to water.

If you want more than one, separate them: a day-scented pot by the door where you pass in the morning, and one night-scented pot beside the evening chair. Distance between them is what lets each one register.

Building the Pot Itself

A fragrance pot is a container planting like any other, and the usual rules apply.

Size it up rather than down. A larger pot dries out more slowly, and a fragrant plant that is stressed for water stops flowering, which stops the scent. The relationship between pot size and how many plants you can put in it is covered in how many plants per container.

Check the sun before you choose. Most strongly fragrant flowering plants want full sun, so a shaded north-facing balcony narrows the list considerably and pushes you toward the touch-released group, which cares less. Which plants suit which exposure is set out in flowers for full sun containers and flowers for shade containers.

If you want the pot to look composed as well as smell right, the standard structure works fine here: an upright plant for height, something fuller around it, and something trailing over the edge. That arrangement is explained in thriller, filler, spiller.

Deadhead it. This matters more for a fragrance pot than for an ornamental one, because scent comes from the flowers and a plant left to set seed stops producing them. How to deadhead flowers in pots covers the technique, and why container flowers stop blooming covers it when deadheading is not the problem.

Two Honest Cautions

Strong evening fragrance is not universally pleasant. Night-scented plants directly outside a bedroom window are wonderful for about a week and then, for some people, are simply too much to sleep next to. Start with the pot beside the chair rather than under the window, and move it if you want to.

Check what a plant is before you put it where a pet or a child sits. A number of popular fragrant balcony plants are toxic if chewed, and that is worth ten seconds of checking the specific plant you are buying rather than assuming. This is not a reason to avoid fragrance, only a reason to look up the particular plant.

Starting From Nothing

If this is your first pot rather than an addition, start with sweet alyssum in a decent-sized container beside the chair, in as much sun as your balcony gets. It is forgiving, it flowers for a long stretch, the scent is pleasant rather than overpowering, and it will tell you whether the placement is right before you spend more.

The general how-to for a first container is in how to plant flowers in pots for beginners, and what to put in a pot at this point in the season is in what to plant in containers in August.

The Short Version

• Place the pot within arm's reach of the chair, upwind, and off the floor. This matters more than the plant.
• Night-scented plants for evening sitting, day-scented for mornings. Choosing wrong is the second most common reason a fragrance pot disappoints.
• Scented-leaf geraniums and herbs release scent on touch, so they belong where you brush past them.
• One good pot beats five scattered ones. Close-range scents compete.
• Keep deadheading. No flowers, no fragrance.