Alyssum - Sweet Alyssum

Lobularia maritima( Sweet Alyssum )

Over the years I've come to appreciate the marvelous white Sweet Alyssum for many reasons. The alyssum, a cousin of sorts to the yellow early flowering perenniel which I featured in another blog (see May 11), comes up faithfully year after year, although it is classified as an annual or biennial. Being a bienniel allows for continual white blooms to flourish throughout the summer months right up until frost, since this years blooms are products of a parent alyssum blooming two seasons earlier. (That's how I understand bienniel flowers to bloom - the foxglove is another example of this kind of reproduction).

Of course I really like the alyssum because it is hardy and drought tolerant and fills up spaces in flower beds in great profusion, off-setting red geraniums, hot-pink impatiens, or brilliant magenta petunias. As alyssum grows and expands rapidly, it is necessary to pull out and clip its borders. Early next spring I'll find a multitude of tiny alyssum popping up all over the flower beds. I like to catch them early enough and place them where I'll need them, since alyssum do better being transplanted when they're tiny.

But the greatest bonanza comes when the alyssum emits its sweet honey-scented fragrance on a hot summer's day, effusing its intoxicating scent with great delight and spectacular generosity throughout the garden, for all lucky enough to enjoy.

There are many other heavenly scented flowering shrubs, vines and flowers which I'll post separately.

ps for those following the blog I posted one today which I'd had in my draft folder and it kept the original date (July 12) and so it's in that chronological order now. Can anyone tell me how to adjust the date so that I can post items from my draft folder on the current date?