“The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.” Shakespeare

As I walked into the kitchen I caught a whiff of something in the air that sent me back years. I’d like to say it was nostalgic, but that would add a tint of rose to the memory. The smell in question was nappies (or diapers for my US friends).

I took out the bin, emptied the waste food caddy & washed the kitchen floor with a double dose of Flash, yet still the unpleasant odour lingered. Before long, I realised the cause of my discomfort was the vase of pretty paper whites sitting innocently by the window. Immediately, they went the way of the waste food and into the compost. The scent, which fills so many with the anticipation of spring, was, to me, a nasal nightmare.

One of the foibles of being human is that we all have different senses of smell, the billion dollar perfume industry is testament to that, as is our response to flowers. Some don’t smell certain flowers at all and if they do, one person’s heaven sent scent is another person’s hell.

Last year, whilst doing work experience at Hampton Court Palace, I caught a whiff of something very special. I mentioned it to a colleague working nearby. ‘Yes, very nice, ‘ she replied. ‘Nice?’ I thought. NICE?’ This wasn’t nice: it was heady, intoxicating, enthralling. I was enticed back to it every ten minutes to draw in the scent.

I became obsessed with the smell and had to have it. A few months later, after hours of internet trawling and wandering around endless nurseries sniffing every Viburnum in sight, I eventually concluded it was probably Viburnum carlesii ‘Aurora’. It wasn’t an easy viburnum to acquire, but I now have a sorry looking little specimen standing on my back patio. I suspect it may be months before I smell that scent again.

I mentioned nostalgia and that’s one of the reasons why we love scented flowers so much. Honeysuckle and sweet peas take me straight back to another time, another place. The scent of daffodils takes me back to the day I arrived back in the U.K. after living in Turkey. I was moving in with my then boyfriend, now husband. When I walked into the flat, it was filled with the scent wafting from a massive vase of them in the middle of the table. I’ve loved them ever since.

These scents also remind me of my travels around the world. The smell of Jasmine is one familiar to English gardeners but somehow it doesn’t quite fill the air in that thick, heavy way that it used to, along with the Frangipani in our garden in Zimbabwe. These combined with then Acacia karroo that always reminded me of fresh laundry made for an captivating combinations of scents.

Some years later, living in Trinidad, we would drive through the countryside to stay in Grand Riviere, a remote village on the north coast where the leatherback turtles would lay their eggs. At one particular point in our journey, the scent of ginger lilies would fill the car. When I mentioned this to a friend one day he said, ‘Yes, we always shut the windows for that part.’

This brings me back to where I started. Whilst paperwhites may be spilling out of vases in homes across the land, mine will remain in the compost, doing their bit for future flowers. Me, I’m off to buy some daffodils (or if I’m very lucky, someone might buy them for me!).