Brilliant by day, the white flower garden is even better by night. My own exposure began one moonlight night when I ventured out and found the common alyssum casting a psychedelic glow in the romantic light of a full moon. The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan constructed such a site in his own Moonlight Garden in the seventeenth century.The Shah Jahan never did build his own tomb, but is buried in the Taj Mahal with his beloved wife.

Like the famous modern-day garden at Sissinghurst Castle, it was planted with pale flowers such as narcissus, jasmine and lilies. Fragrance was always part of the white garden as many white flowers give their fragrances at night. 

Long ago I wrote a botanical description about a plant that I think was simply beyond intoxicating. Gladiolus tristus was the plant, but the description was not about a plant.

What don't you understand?
"The tall wands of firm slender stems or the delicate cream-white blossoms that are like wind-bells of the night playing to nature's restless breezes." Maybe they aren't easy and need courtly care. They can, however, given proper nurturing become sassy boisterous clumps and their fragrance simply overwhelming. Even one blossom, even one night is an inspiration. This is a flower one has to work for! "To swirl and to swoon and even bats got to fly." 

The complete sensualist forgot to mention that moths might be the pollinator of this plant. White flowers are often "moth flowers," which means they are pollinated by night-flying moths. Not only can nocturnal insects locate a flower by the light of the moon, but these pale flowers have also adapted to produce a sweet perfume that triggers the moth's highly developed olfactory sense. Their perfume bind the night flying moths to we humans, who take benefit for all their chemical and physical encounters.

Some moths such as the Luna do not come to your garden for nectar or for food. Adult Luna moths are born to mate, nothing else matters. The way to a Luna Moth's heart is not through food from the flowers food, (they store in fat from their larval state) it is through habitat and certain lights. Fragrances and the low intensity reflected light from the flowers do attract the moth. High intensity street/ security lights (and pesticide pollution)seem to have reduced the Luna Moth population severely, and in turn the whippoorwill that feeds upon them. Too often we forget the chain reaction we create when we reduce a species -- or habitat chain. 




A friend wrote that,"the colors we surround ourselves with might say a lot about ourselves, but in the front garden, airs are often put on. The result in a publicly viewed garden is that the colors we choose say less about ourselves, and more about what we want people to think about us."

The romantic fragrant moonlight garden is none of the above. It is a garden entirely constructed for the romantic couple that lives within. A garden that is exotic,well jasmined, and that glows not only to the moon, but also to the couple that glows to the moon. I often wish that I lived in a warmer clime, as the mystical fragrances of some of these plants are a bit lost in our cold maritime air. 

Night parties that could enjoy the heady fragrances of such creatures as G.'tristus' or honeysuckle, roses, lilies, datura, night blooming jasmine and other plants are somewhat lost when we need to wear skullcaps and wooly long johns to enjoy them. The stars however, do remain and perhaps some modern-day gardeners (and relationships) might well benefit from a nocturnal stroll down the development of their own moonlight garden.

The most famous modern-day garden can be found at Sissinghurst Castele in England. It was built by the poet, novelist and gardener Vita Sackville-West and her husband Sir Harold Nicholson. As to the ethereal beauty of the white garden she wrote: The ice-green shades that it can take on in certain lights, by twilight or moonlight, perhaps by moonlight especially, make a dream of a garden, an unreal vision." Night brings magic as well as spirits, luminescent and glowing like the flower of the Saguaro in the desert, it creates a magic moment ... the magic of a ghostly, glowing garden that encompasses form, contrast, fragrance and beauty.



These luminous plants can include the exotic as well as the common; all it takes is the planting and the visitation under the full moon. 

I include a few suggestions that you might consider in the inclusion of such a garden.

Trees and shrubs

Many of the Magnolia species, as well as the terribly overlooked Cladastris kentukea, a hardy tall-growing tree of beautiful foliage and wonderfully pendulous white flower panicles that are fragrant. The same goes with the white flowered Wisteria, be they W. floribunda 'Longissima Alba' or the lesser known W.sinensis forms. Add to these gazebos, trussed with Jasminum officianale, the poet's jasmine, Clematis armandii or Clematis 'Guernsey Cream' or roses such as 'Iceberg' rich with honey-like scent that will beckon you from many feet away.

Shrubs could include the variegated forms of Osmanthus h. 'Varegatus' or the incomparable workhorse Chyrsanthemum hosmariense, her silver foliage and white chrysanthemum flowers work from spring's frosty dusk to fall's first frost.

I would also add Daphne odora 'Alba', and the white-flowering quince 'Snow' and 'Candida'. Dark foliaged shrubs such as Acanthus mollis, spinosis or Cimicifuga simplex 'Brunette' also work well as their darkness is hidden but their white flower plumes are not. 

More heat tolerant shrubs (and tender) would include Oleander, Rose-of Sharon, a white flowered rosemary, Halmiocistus wintonensis, Datura and Matiliya poppy, Romneya coulteri.

Perennials and a few annuals

Perennials not to be overlooked would include mats of Cerastium tomentosum, Lamium 'White Nancy', Achillea clavennae, A. tomentosa, Artemesia versicolor 'Seafoam',A. schmidtiana 'Silver Mound', A. 'Powis Castle', Helichrysum italicum dwf., Heuchera 'Snow Angel', Raoulia australis, Santolina incana, Tanacetum haradjanii also known as Chrysanthemum haradjanii.


There are also the silver leafed Verbascum's with yellow flowers and Senecio's with the same. Aster's and Boltonia include many white flowered forms as does Gaura lindheimeri. Nicotiana, Senecio, white flowered California Poppy and allysum would be a few of the annuals I would include!. I also find that the inclusion of blue foliaged plants such as Festuca or Helictotrichon (Blue oat grass) does little to detract from the white. So too, the dark foliage of the Calla lily.

Chrysanthemum hosmariense remains the frost to frost work horse to beat all.




Bulbs and corms

In addition to my aforementioned Gladiolus tristus, Leucojum and Narcissus bring an early spring color to the forum. So do early Alliums, Muscari alba and Easter lilies. Calla Lilies, and Oriental/Asiatic Lilies such as 'Casablanca' add to the summer show. 

All in all, although I no longer have a white garden, I did enjoy the one I had. As some suggest their own preference is for form or texture over color. I find the elemental shades of black and white a fascinating one. Photographing one's garden in black and white is an interesting study. Capturing the luminescence of a moonlit garden is a special delight!



In the meantime, I am working on my black garden. Rudbeckia 'Black Beauty' has just been ordered and my 'special order' black gazing globe is on it's way. Geesh, those things are expensive!

Other plants that can add fragrance to your garden, and a few notes about accenting the http://www.fritech.com/skyline/scent.htm
Scent in your garden. Re-do DEAD article.

© 1993 Herb Senft

This is for my new employer in GASP the year 2009, Marilynn, who loves the white even though the Lychis is a weed.