The flowers of sweetbox (Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis) are small but sweetly scented. At least, that’s what I hear, and possibly that’s why it was planted many years ago, but before I realized I can’t smell a thing.

Sweetbox is slow to get started, but after a few years, it begins to spread slowly but steadily. And now, I must dig out bits that regularly invade the stone path. Two clumps that were overwhelming a Japanese Forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) were transplanted a few years ago. They haven’t grown an inch. Maybe this year.

There was once a large daphne growing in the peninsula bordered by the stream when the sweetbox was struggling to get going. But, as daphnes do, it died, and today, the sweetbox is a solid, low hedge with tiny, late winter flowers that I can’t smell. Still, I don’t have to explain the choice since everyone else enjoys the fragrance.

I can smell some things. When there were more daphnes, I could smell a few. And, no way will I bring hyacinth flowers indoors. The sweetness is suffocating.

Long ago, I planted several paperbushes  (Edgeworthia chrysantha, below). The daphne relatives are not common in gardens, for whatever reason, and at the time, they were reputed to be very marginally cold hardy for this northwestern Virginia garden. The hardiness has been revised to include colder zones, though flowers can be lost as temperatures near zero (Fahrenheit).

Flowers of paperbush are delightful, and I heard later that they are delightfully scented. But, not for me, and while sweetbox serves its evergreen purpose with flowers barely large enough to be seen, the flowers of paperbush are large and exquisite, scented or not.

The flowers have become my indicator that spring has arrived, though once they flowered in late January with much of winter still to go. Today, there’s color showing, and by the second week of March, they should approach their peak. This is probably a bit later than its average, and of course, I’ve checked the silvery buds every day for the past month.

With a bunch of rain earlier in winter, a few flower buds have been lost in the lower, rear garden. Paperbushes dislike damp soils, and two of six are just damp enough to occasionally show stress when the soil is saturated. Still, both have grown to twenty feet, or wider, not bad for a shrub I expected to mature at six feet tall and wide. I can’t smell the flowers, but paperbushes are one of my favorites.