Over the past few weeks of warm weather, many of us will have enjoyed an all-too-rare chance to sit out in the garden in the evening. As you pour a glass of wine and relax after a day’s work, the candles flickering in the warm breeze, what could be more redolent of summer’s pleasures than the sweet smell of honeysuckle, jasmine and roses in the air?

A garden without perfume seems to be missing something. Watch people as they pass a beautiful flower: they will naturally lean their noses towards whatever is in bloom, in the hope of finding a fragrance, and feel disappointed if they are denied this. A rose without scent seems half the flower compared to one that smells of cloves and musk.

People have been creating scented gardens since medieval times, when a perfumed bower offered a welcome escape from the whiffs of unwashed bodies and clothes. Lavender and other herbs would be cut to strew on floors, too. At Lytes Cary Manor, a Tudor house near Somerton, Somerset, home of the 16th-century herbalist Henry Lyte, the traditional lavender garden has just been revamped to take it into the next 500 years. There are now 250 blue Lavandula x intermedia ‘Grosso’ in beds edged with box and flanked by yew hedging, with myrtle in the corners (both with particular aromas), looking as attractive as it smells.

While most of us associate scent with traditional gardens such as Lytes Cary, rather than streamlined contemporary design, Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins showed why that needn’t always be the case with their gold-medal-winning Perfume Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May. “I wanted what I call the ‘tingle factor’,” Chetwood says. “Something that ignited the subtle senses. I also wanted it to be a sanctuary of some sort. Scent creates both these things.”

The garden was composed of sleek beds of aromatic plants — roses, lilies, pinks, ferns and herbs — contained by cedar panels, and was interspersed with tall clipped thuja trees. In the centre, a steel perfumery created perfume for the show’s visitors. “Making scent modern is all about plant associations,” Collins explains. “For example, we put the burgundy rose ‘Tuscany Superb’ among herbs such as sage and purple fennel.”

Marc Fulljames, a landscape gardener and designer, tries to include scent as much as possible in his designs. “In my work, I’ve seen endless gardens, but most lacked something, and I realised it was smell,” he says. “I remember my grandmother’s cottage garden in the 1960s. It was a wonderful pool of scent, but it’s rare to find such a place nowadays, perhaps because many modern plants are bred for colour, flower power and health.”

So keen is he on powerful perfumes, he has started ScentedShrubs.com, a mail-order firm specialising in fragrant plants. As well as summer favourites, it has winter-flowering varieties such as daphne and osmanthus.

Perfumed plants can also be used as an aromatherapy experience that you don’t need to visit the therapist for. At Woodvale, Brighton’s beautiful Grade II-listed cemetery, a Sensory Garden has been created to provide comfort to the bereaved. Paths wind through slick oval beds of lavender and other herbs, which infuse the air with their soothing scent — in much the same way as you might put their oil in the bath or on your pillow to help you sleep.

It is not only flowers with smell that add to the sensory experience of a garden: leaves such as mint and lemon balm release an aroma when crushed. Tread on thyme and camomile, planted between the cracks of paving, and the air will fill with their scent. You can even create a thyme or camomile lawn, although it is best to do so somewhere that doesn’t have much traffic.

Vita Sackville-West designed two thyme lawns in different coloured varieties at Sissinghurst Castle, in Kent, to echo the Persian rugs she had seen on her travels. Sadly, there are now so many visitors to the property that you can no longer step on them.

If you feel inspired, but have only a regularly used space to spare, you could follow the lead of the gardeners at Buckingham Palace. The Queen’s lawns bear thousands of feet a year at royal garden parties — not to mention the garden tours that have started this year — so they have planted camomile among the regular grass.

A good example of a camomile lawn that thrives under moderate treading can be seen at 2 Prospect Place, in Outlane, Yorkshire, which will be open with the National Gardens Scheme today (noon-5pm; entry £2.50). A 9ft circular camomile lawn (Chamaemelum nobile ‘Treneague’) sits within a scented area that is surrounded by hedging. This is a clever trick, as the hedging helps to contain the scent; large shrubs and walls will also do the trick. Without them, the perfumes can be stolen by

the breeze.

Brick walls are especially good for making use of scent, as their warmth encourages plants to release their perfumes, then captures it. You can see this in action in the half-acre sanctum at Hatfield House, in Hertfordshire, where the scented garden, planted with phlox, heliotropes, roses and pinks, was revamped last year and is surrounded by 9ft-high red-brick walls.

It’s not only human beings who appreciate perfumed plants; they are also excellent for encouraging wildlife. A butterfly’s sense of smell is estimated to be 1,000 times more powerful than our own, and it will travel many miles to visit the flowers it likes. “Each breed has plants it takes nectar from and plants it uses for egg-laying,” says Clive Farrell, founder of the new Butterfly World garden at Chiswell Green, in Hertfordshire. “If you grow the right things, your garden will flutter with your favourite butterflies.”

A safe bet is honey-scented buddleia, known as the “butterfly bush”. Butterflies are more partial to pink, lavender and white buddleias than to the trendy ‘Black Knight’ variety, Farrell says. Moths, meanwhile, go weak at the knees for the perfume and white petals of flowers such as honeysuckle and sweet rocket, which release their odours late in the day.

Don’t worry if you dislike moths — they will ignore you and plunge into the flowers. Dot the terrace with pots of nicotiana, lilies and pillars of jasmine. They will fill the air with perfume while you sip your evening drink and take a deep breath.

Suppliers: ScentedShrubs.com (01403 264955, scentedshrubs.com ); Morehaven Camomile Lawns (01494 758642, camomilelawns.co.uk ). For butterfly-friendly plants, visit butterfly-conservation.org

Gardens: Lytes Cary Manor (01458 224471, nationaltrust.org.uk ); Sissinghurst Castle Garden (01580 710701, nationaltrust.org.uk ); 2 Prospect Place (01422 376408, ngs.org.uk ); Hatfield House (01707 287010, hatfield-house.co.uk ); Butterfly World (01442 257722, butterfly-world.org)

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