HYACINTH PERFUME

I always find it funny when people who grow flowers in their gardens will not cut them and bring them indoors.   For a few days I have been looking at the beautiful white hyacinths (Hyacinth Carnegie) I have growing in a trough under a window facing south, and at the yellow hyacinths (Yellow Queen) growing in a free-standing trough in the back garden, against the protection of a south facing fence.  I know they smell divine but the weather has been so bad that my plan, when I planted them last year, of smelling them through an open window or sitting on my garden swing near the trough at the back and having their fragrance waft over me, has been destroyed by the terrible weather.  There is little chance of my enjoying such plan while the weather continues to be cold, rainy, and/or blowing a gale.   So yesterday I cut three of the yellow hyacinth flower spikes, brought them indoors, and put them in a vase.  Actually, it is no sacrifice as, surprisingly, many of the yellow hyacinths are producing two flower spikes so by cutting one flower, I am giving the other a better chance.  Those three flower spikes have perfumed the whole of my small home, the fragrance travelling through every room.   In fact, I initially  put them near where I sit and read by the window and I had to move them because the perfume was so strong, it was knocking my head off!

Yellow Queen, hyacinth

 

I know that a lot of people actually grow hyacinths indoors, planting them so that they will flower in spring, but I have found that the light indoors isn't always sufficient, in my case, and they just grow tall and leggy and the stems bend down under the weight of the flowers.   I am seriously pleased at how the bulbs that I planted outdoors last autumn have withstood the most awful of winters with heavy snows, and sub-zero temperatures.  I did actually think they would have given up the ghost.