Simply Scentsational^® Sweetshrub Calycanthus floridus

I went with Scentsational since I am trying to add as many North American-native plants as I can. (Some of the other sweet shrubs on the market are hybrids, crossed with foreign species) The flowers I got smelled like grape-soda. I could only smell them when I put my nose right up in the flower, or, random waffs from far away. It’s not the most ornamental shrub, but if you like some interesting smelling flowers, followed by a simple green (native) shrub go ahead and plant one!

I bought this almost-guaranteed-fragrant sweetshrub because my Proven Winners Aphrodite has zero fragrance. This one has terrific candy-like fragrance but only if you stick your nose right into a flower. This is my second season with it. It currently is covered in blooms again --and let's face it, sweetshrubs are a bit dumpy, we're buying these solely for the fragrance -- But you certainly can't detect any scent on mine more than an inch away. And just as with last year, even that scent fades to nothing after a couple of days. A fragrant garden was my ultimate goal, as migraines prevent me from bringing scents inside. But it's been maddening. PW isn't the only grower promising fragrances that don't deliver.. The only scent we have is from lavenders and the neighbor's old lilacs which are so strong they waft several yards away.. My advice, that I wish I had taken initially, is to find a straight species sweetshrub if you can afford the space. Once it's been tinkered with, sweetshrub seems to lose its best asset. And the scentstational is the least attractive of the bunch, too. The flowers have kind of an odd, decayed look to them as if they are already dried for arrangement. I would have gladly put up with it if it had lived up to its claims.