Get to know the most fragrant houseplants with this guide!
Fresh oxygen, green leaves, and colorful flowers are some great reasons to grow houseplants. Certain houseplants also fill your home with a pleasing fragrance. Look no further than these tropicals to bring the scent of summer right into your home!
Fragrant Orchids
Originating in the tropics, these unique plants usually grow on trees, absorbing moisture from the rain and air. They bloom with butterfly-like flowers ranging from red to pink, yellow, orange, and purple. Even without the fragrance, orchids are wonderful houseplants to grow, but certain varieties also bring exquisite scents into your home, like Vanilla Orchids, Pansy Orchids, Cattleya Orchids, and others.
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Citrus
Pennsylvania is not the first place where you’d expect to find citrus trees, but inside our homes is the perfect environment to grow them. Lime, lemon, and orange trees make small, elegant trees that will even produce fruit once they’re big enough. You can also enjoy the leaves for flavor in soups, curries, and other dishes. Besides that, these houseplants bring wonderful citrus fragrance into your home.
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Gardenia
Gardenias are not typically considered a low-maintenance houseplant that thrives on utter neglect. No, they need some care to flourish, like ample humidity, frequent watering, and the right amount of light. If you treat them to what they need, they’ll reward you with lush green foliage and fragrant white blossoms. The scent is sweet and zesty with creaminess like a coconut. It conjures up memories of summer nights and tropical breezes. It’s so wonderful that the fragrance is commonly used in perfume. The best part is that gardenia continues to bloom from spring to fall. |
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Jasmine
When your name becomes an adjective to describe other scents, you know you’ve made it big in the world of fragrance, and jasmine is one of those plants! It is famous for the clusters of white blossoms that smell like, well, jasmine. Rich, fruity, sensual, and sweet are a few good words to describe it. Indoors, you can train this vine to grow up a stake, around a circular handle of a basket, or to trail over the edges of your pot. Ample moisture and annual pruning are key to keeping it in shape. Proper maintenance will reward you with frizzy green leaves and clusters of fragrant blossoms. |
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Lavender
Lavender has long been grown for its soothing scent and healing properties. You can grow lavender outside year-round in Pennsylvania if it has sunny, dry conditions. Indoors, it becomes a wonderfully calming houseplant. The main thing is to give it bright, direct sunlight for success. You can use the leaves and flowers for cooking, tea, and potpourri.
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Hoya
These long-living succulents offer scented blossoms and exquisite vining leaves. The only trick is to get them to flower, which you can do in two main ways: make them happy or deliberately stress them out. If you succeed, you’ll be rewarded with small clusters of waxy flowers ranging from white to dark pink. These blossoms have notes of vanilla, chocolate, or citrus. Even without the flowers, these succulent vines are beautiful houseplants to grow. |
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Sansevieria
Also known as the Snake Plant, this tough, low-maintenance houseplant does not produce flowers or emit a fragrance for most of the year. Many people don’t realize that it flowers at all. However, given the right conditions, it can bloom once per year and bring a delicious fragrance into the room! What are those conditions? It only needs bright light and some loving neglect. You don’t have to water it and fuss over it. Next to a bright window, it will expand and grow rootbound. Then, if you let it dry out, the stress of drought will inspire it to reproduce with aromatic blossoms. The honeysuckle-like flowers of the snake plant have an odor of vanilla or jasmine and only open at night, closing again during the day.
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Do Houseplants Make Your Home Smell Good?
Many houseplants don’t have a significant fragrance. However, they still freshen the air in your home by exhaling oxygen. Some houseplants also bring beautiful scents when blossoming, like gardenia, jasmine, sansevieria, hoya, and fragrant orchids. Other houseplants exude perfume from their leaves, including citrus, mint, and lavender.
Which Plant Has the Most Fragrance?
Gardenia and jasmine are two houseplants that bring strong perfumes into your home, but it’s hard to say whether they are the most fragrant. If you’re curious, visit our Garden Center to explore your options and see what scents strike your fancy.
Even though our gardens are bursting with life during the summer, that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to enjoy plants in our homes as well. They moderate our indoor climate year-round and boost our physical and mental health in many ways. A beautiful fragrance is simply another reason to bring these companions into your home!
To see our full catalog of fragrant houseplants, visit our garden center today in Glenside, PA!