The most demanding, delicious pelargoniums, from the variety that likes it drier than a Martini, to the flower with peppermint-scented leaves 'as soft as mouse fur'

We have been mired in the building of a glasshouse from gymnasium windows and a random door, thinking it would be cheaper than a greenhouse. True, but for a while we referred to it as ‘the Shell garage’, owing to its resemblance to a petrol station thrown up in the 1930s when motoring was a thrill. Now, it’s the Café de Pellée, a winter palace for our pelargoniums.

We hope conditions are right for the clientele — a white ceiling with roof lights and vents, glazed on three sides, because pelargoniums, as does anything under glass, need copious ventilation. If you start to find whitefly, open windows and doors and spread the pots out or get them outside. Space and shade are paramount. Ed Boers and Laura Whiley, the new proprietors of Fibrex Nurseries in Worcestershire, advocate 40% shade as optimum: this is surprising, but perhaps not when you think of them in the back porch or a Chinese takeaway. Although they seem to thrive on nonchalance, pelargoniums must be kept frost free, and dry in winter. Mr B sometimes simply de-pots and throws them in a heap under the bench until spring.

Yet come spring, pelargoniums are conversely responsive to restless grooming: manicuring of spent flowers and leaves. Luckily, keeping them kempt is both meditative and aromatherapeutic. Mr B loves to tend to the needs of a Jilly Cooper-esque cultivar such as P. ‘Clorinda’, louche and puce, yet abhors my grandmother’s zonal pelargoniums, calling them the ‘Clarice Cliff’ of the greenhouse.

Latest Videos From

Watch full video here:

My grandmother’s geraniums were guardsman-scarlet and had leaves that smelled of hot Draylon. They were planted out each summer in a military row, but were, correctly speaking, pelargoniums. Cranesbills and stork’s bills; that is the old confusion.

The geranium or cranesbill is a low northern, hardy, herbaceous perennial: the ubiquitous G. ‘Rozanne’. The pelargonium is different, being tender, generally from South Africa and known as stork’s bills owing to the fruit’s resemblance to a bird’s beak, which is part of their charm. Pelargonium species come, like liquorice, in all sorts, including zonal, ivy and, best of all, scented-leaved species and varieties.

Not being a botanist, the definition of ‘species’ has long perplexed me, but, put simply, species are the original wild forms and generally more robust, particularly when indigenous. Cultivars have been selected (and often transported across oceans) by generations of humanity, and hybrids are the result of both naturally occurring and deliberate crossbreeding.

Pelargoniums are not indigenous, but they offer extended flowering and scent from their numerous cultivars. Yet species pelargoniums are where it all began, combining subtle beauty with leaves and sometimes flowers that smell of the veldt. ‘Bonjour!’ to Pelargonium triste, the first species to reach Europe from the Cape; part of the plant library of John Tradescant by 1632.

The specific epithet derived from the Latin for sad or gloomy. It is pale, shy, scented, dormant in summer, but, on February evenings, Pelargonium triste unfolds five petals of tallow dashed with darkest plum; uncooked spiced pastries in look and smell. These damson splashes are more intense on her near cousin P. lobatum, whose evening perfume is sherbet fountains. P. lobatum’s offspring (after a coupling with P. fulgidum, which has lipstick scarlet flowers) is P. ‘Ardens’, my favourite winter flower fairy. She wears a Fortuny hat of velutinous madder smudged darkest crimson, but she has no scent.

All the above are tuberous — known colloquially as ‘gouty’ — pelargoniums, on account of their swollen basal nodes, and are difficult to propagate. This makes them all the more desirable. The garden designer Helen Dillon suggests cutting up the tuber with a bit of stem and burying the whole thing completely in light compost, praying for a plant in three months: ‘At no stage disturb the pots to see what’s happening.’

However, regular pelargoniums strike from the smallest cutting, providing presents for friends. You might like to give them P. sidoides, whose beaky purple flowers emerge from grey cashmere stems, felty, but sticky with a gum that smells sour from April until December.

They all deplore the stagnant and the damp, but P. sidoides likes Martini-dry conditions. P. odoratissimum, on the other hand, a prostrate shrublet whose candied apple scent emanates from small white flowers, revels in shaded places in the Cape woodland.

My great love of the moment — but this will change — likes just such an umbrageous corner. P. tomentosum, meaning downy, not tormented, has mossy peppermint-coloured and peppermint-scented leaves, as soft as mouse fur; tactile heaven for small children and obsessive adults. These species are worth all the attention they seek.

This feature originally appeared in the June 24, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.