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Raising the Scent of Gardenias to New Heights

The plant’s relatively high-maintenance is well worth it (like marriage)

Walter Bowne

Published in

The Environment

7 min readJul 21, 2023

The author snaps a picture of his wild gardenia on the porch of his mountain lake home in PA. This is a wild GARDENIA THUNBERGIA — a “very un-gardenia like gardenia” (link).

Through the screened windows, the gardenias are intoxicating with their fragrance. Various birds — a dark-eyed junco — an Eastern phoebe — Carolina wrens — carol and echo between the beech trees, the red…

DISPATCH FROM EDEN

Raising the Scent of Gardenias to New Heights

The plant’s relatively high-maintenance is well worth it (like marriage)

Written by Walter Bowne