When the kids were little, the Food Network was a great family friendly tv channel that we all could enjoy. Once when we were watching while I was cooking dinner, I remember hearing famous Chef Emeril Lagasse say that he wished that those of us in tv land had Smell-O-Vision so that we could smell his delicious food. I remember being so glad that we did not.
Smell is a hard one for me. In my thirties, I had to stop wearing perfume because it triggered my migraines and have subsequently had to remove all scented products from inside my home. That’s not to say that I don’t love a wonderful fragrance, but I have grown accustomed to living without. Gardening has provided the perfect compromise for me. I can grow and enjoy gorgeous smelling flowers outside while maintaining my smell-free zone inside.
I stumbled upon the heavenly smell of the oakleaf hydrangea inadvertently. We had an evergreen tree growing on the corner of the house that was rapidly becoming too tall for my husband to prune safely. The tree was planted at the top of a slope that makes safe ladder placement pretty much impossible. The last thing that I wanted to do was to let the tree grow up to the roofline to give the squirrels and raccoons a nice stairway to heaven, aka my attic, so the tree had to go.
An oakleaf hydrangea seemed like the perfect replacement with its showstopper flowers, and its 4’ to 6’ height and 5’ to 6’ spread had just enough gravitas to anchor the corner of the house. But when I planted the ‘Snow Queen’ variety of Hydrangea quercifolia in the fall of 2015, I had no idea that an absolutely heavenly sweet fragrance awaited me when it bloomed in the late spring. I was outside doing something when the most amazing smell came by on a breeze, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that it came from the ‘Snow Queen.’ What an unexpected gift. Its scent isn’t something all permeating like a lilac’s Yankee Candle Store-scented power, but it is absolutely gorgeous and worth a daily visit to enjoy its fragrance when in bloom. The only downside that I have come across so far is leaf spot. It has been particularly bad after rainy spring seasons, but I have been able to manage it fairly well by removing the most heavily infected leaves and using an appropriate fertilizer treatment.
Given the importance of supporting natural habitats in our garden landscapes, it is also worth noting that the oakleaf hydrangea is native to the southeastern United States. And as an added bonus, it needs little to no pruning. I have only had to reach for my pruners once to remove a dead branch. And as we head into the winter months, the ‘Snow Queen’ has bestowed her parting fall gift exiting on a beautiful red carpet of leaves.
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