London's fragrant front gardens

Wisteria, magnolia, cherry, lilac… perfumed trees and climbers turn an urban street into a scented trail

• 
• • Dan Pearson
  • The Observer, Sunday 16 May 2010

A dramatic Wisteria sinensis on a London street. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

At the end of April, I cycled home late after a birthday dinner. I had to make my way from northwest London to Peckham, in the southeast, and I followed a route that I have put together over the years. It takes in the parks and the streets where I know favourite things grow. It was one of those rare still evenings, the first of the summer, and I took my time.
The plane trees were sage green in the street lights and the air was heady with the almondy smell of cumulative blossom and bud break. Hyde Park was cut with the smell of newly mown grass and there was a feeling of expectancy in new leaf and flower. I found favourite trees on my route home. A Davidia involucrata was just coming into bloom in Kensington and I stood on the pavement and marvelled at the papery bracts dangling above me. The handkerchief tree must be an extraordinary thing to see in Chinese woodland, where it is native.
I have planted several davidias for clients in the past few years, and promised them that the wait will be worth it: 15 years after planting is often mentioned in the books, but I have flowered several in five where the conditions are right. They like a hearty soil and plenty of sun, but above all they need shelter from the wind, so that the bracts are not torn to shreds when in season.
A magnolia "Elizabeth" was my next objective and the waxy flowers illuminated a side street in Chelsea. Our odd spring, pushed back so that everything came together, has meant that many plants have been flowering alongside unlikely neighbours, and the magnolia was a good two weeks late. "Elizabeth" is one of the most elegant yellow-flowered magnolias and the flowers are a primrose, creamy green. They twist like tulips, and when there are enough together the tree will muster a sweet and delicious perfume.
The wisterias, such a mainstay of Chelsea, were beginning to furnish the hot sunny walls, but I passed them by to head for a house in Westminster where there is the best Wisteria sinensis I have ever seen. It is a good, true blue and flowering from top to bottom over four floors. I grow the Japanese Wisteria floribunda, as I prefer the greater length of the racemes, but the Chinese W sinensis is good for this slightly earlier awakening. It was fingering the street as I approached.
Drifts of cherry blossom whirled on the pavements as I made my way towards my favourite Prunus avium "Plena", which overhangs the railings of Kennington Park. The double gean is one of the latest cherries and, being double, it hangs on to its flowers longer than most. I stood underneath the whirls of blossom and stared up into the branches, where thousands upon thousands of perfect buttons reached up as far as I could crane my neck.
As I made my way through the side streets of south London, I marvelled at the way the parks and the streets and the gardens had come together in a collective awakening. As I pulled my bike up the steps at the front of the house, the first banksian rose had burst. The first of many buds to break – and my last of an evening lived vicariously.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/16/dan-pearson-gardens-fragrant-plants