'There was nothing there. No smell anywhere. This was four years ago': Life as a gardener and artist without a sense of smell

The first time Mr B and I scrimped and willed our way to an Andalusian spring holiday, many moons ago, wafts of the wildflower meadow that was Malaga airport opened a door in our hearts. Hiring a Fiat Panda for £50 for the week, we headed for the hills on switchback roads, stopping to breathe in the orange groves and to garner herbs. After a roadside lunch of garlicky fried rabbit and potatoes under a naked fig tree, we opened the car door to find the new nylon and plastic interior oozing with the aromatic volatiles from the bouquets cooking on the back shelf. Teaching me to look and smell, Mr B told me stories of smelly ambushes, such as the acrid pong of the tanneries in Fez, Morocco, evaporating in the trail of a train of donkeys laden with great bundles of mint. Or how the Ambre Solaire suntan lotion, the essence of my girlie adolescence, smelled of Lilium regale.

Mr B is not quite sure when it happened. At no point did he have covid symptoms. ‘Not even a sniffle,’ he says. Then came a day when he decided to wash the flagstone floor and then wax it with pure turpentine mixed with beeswax, one of the great smells he has always loved. Yet there was nothing there. No smell anywhere.

This was four years ago.

For a man who has valued and nurtured his sense of smell, a sensualist, an artist in the garden, this has taken some adjusting to. Even admitting it to himself took a while, never to be assailed by hay, hot tarmac, rain, bread, books, woodsmoke, sea breezes, even diesel.

At times, it has brought him quite low. How much smell affects us all is hugely underestimated. Without smell, taste is also spoilt: taste is more than half smell. On the tongue we glean only sweet; sour; salt; bitter; umami. Unsurprising then, that Mr B says everything tastes of cardboard — except ‘Alphonso’ mangos, the sweetness and texture of which are still luxurious, although not the perfumed pleasure they once were. There again, unpleasantness is lost also: no more broken elder branches and berries; gone is the perfumed reek of airport duty-free zones.

I have tried to monitor if this loss of smell has changed his way of making gardens. He seems less connected to the plants that used to drive all his dreams — roses, mock orange, lilac, lily-of-the-valley, Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’ and Viburnum carlesii, the bringers of spring, which were always ‘must-haves’. It may be more difficult in winter, because winter smells — wintersweet, hamamelis, Algerian iris — are so full of hope and singularity. Is this responsible for his hunter-gathering approach to searching out the pinkest Cyclamen coum? Has his planting become brasher, more dazzling in colour? It is difficult to tell. Never afraid of a French marigold, he has always planted Tagetes, but he is using more of the midget-flowered, pungent-leaved Tagetes tenuifolia ‘Golden Gem’ among the tomatoes as a companion plant. Their pungency is enough to push away the whitefly and he thinks that he sometimes still feels it in his nostrils, but the hairy smell of tomato leaves escapes him.

His particular persuasion has always been for green smells — ferns, mossy places, stumps, snowdrops, scented woodlanders, such as honeysuckle, lily-of-the-valley and the wood daphne, Daphne laureola. The memory banks are still crammed with the cool smell of Devon primroses and warm thyme in open downland and oddities such as Ribes odoratum and the catty smell of R. sanguineum ‘Koja’.

Mr B’s fealty to many salvias was as much for their tangy cassis foliage as their colour. The apple-farm smell of the leaves of the Eglantine rose, Rosa rubiginosa, no longer brings hope after rain on an April day. He still loves the cream suede cups of grandiflora magnolias, but it is the suede texture and ‘Italian matchstick’ anthers that amuse him now.

All of these hold their place in his memory, yet he fears losing the memories, too, through lack of stimulus. He grows some night-scented stocks for pots, with those suntan Lilium regale and brugmansias, for the ‘idea’ that they scent the terrace where we eat and drink, and says he is left only with memory: ‘Words, that’s all I am left with.’ Words for remembered smells, such as lime blossom, a very early memory wrapped up in the fact that the Tilia tomentosa flowered at the same time as the summer fair came to the square in Stanhope on the River Wear in Co Durham. Gardeners are good at adapting, conditioned to find unexpected opportunities among the losses; to eliminate the negative; accentuate the positive.

Isabel Bannerman is, with her husband, Julian, a leading garden designer — see their website.

This feature originally appeared in the October 28, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

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