A lady called Alice

The life of the garden runs in an unending circle. It is a pilgrimage with no beginning and no end.

This has always been the way of the natural world with a season for growth and a season for decay, processing like an endless dance. I love these paper-chases through the seasons, especially during April and May. In May you have to avoid what is known as the ‘May Gap’. This is easy to recognise for just when the garden is full of butterflies and bumblebees, and your enthusiasm is interfering with your blood pressure, the flower colour in the garden vanishes. The spring bulbs will have given of their best during this time, and the early shrubs (along with most magnolias) will be a fading memory. However, if you grow rhododendrons and azaleas you’ll still have intoxicating colour and perfume up to mid-June when the summer heavyweight perennials come into the limelight.

Some azaleas and rhododendrons are obviously better than others, but even the lowliest of that list has more attractions than just their mere presence in the garden. This seems to be particularly true of rhododendrons ‘Fragrantissima’ and ‘Lady Alice’ for both are blessed with a truly captivating perfume. If you have followed my suggestions down the years and invested in the perfumed, winter-flowering Dahpne ‘Jacqueline Postil’, then either of these rhododendrons will also please you. Both are all-time favourites and either are worth every trouble to get them to grow and flower well.

Perfection in high rainfall areas can be difficult, for unless the drainage is made faultless they will develop leaf spot and never really flourish. For this reason the addition of grit, sharp sand, or even half-inch round gravel to the planting site and back-fill soil would be a huge advantage, thus ensuring spotless foliage and (during late summer) quality bud formation. Both have relatively small textured foliage, fine large flowers, and above all, the sweetest scent of all the woody garden plants. Depending on whether spring is early or late these great rhododendrons will delight in April and May even more than ‘Regale’ or ‘Auratum’ lilies (which follow in June) or the choicest of those spring or winter-flowering Daphnes. Best of all is the way their perfume pervades the entire garden and not just the area where they grow. No crawling about on hands or knees to enjoy these (mainly) white, pink-flushed beauties for after a dozen years they’ll still be at face level and modest in spread. Like many plants with a white colouring the blooms of Lady Alice have no pigment and can smell strongly in the garden. Those with a collection of white plants; lilies, creamy-white honeysuckle and rose ‘Blanc de Coubert’ for example, will already know this and rejoice in the knowledge that their choices are not just an random collection of good plants, but an exercise in good taste and sound judgement. ‘Fragrantissima’ and ‘Lady Alice Fitzwilliam’ may also be grown in pots in conservatories so that the gardener may enjoy earlier blooms and captivating perfume, but the same drainage rules apply.

The earlier blooms that these structures provide means that damage from morning frosts will also be eliminated, but as a consequence the white blooms will lack the deep rose flush usually found on outdoor grown plants. Bear in mind also that a conservatory may be too hot for such a noted pair.

Bring the potted subject out for summer. In a cool greenhouse both will come to perfection and are best ordered from nurseries which usually carry stocks of rhododendrons and azaleas.