Join Roanna as she celebrates a unique scent...
Take the winding brick path up from our gravel drive, past the blue shed, through the blue gate and step carefully around the three hens who’ve made themselves at home in our little growing field. This is where you’ll find our greenhouse, the epicentre of the more productive parts of our garden and growing field.
Around June, July, and August you slide open the glass doors to be met with full shelves, pot after pot and tray after tray of seedlings, salads in the bed and biennials we’re growing on. Pause, as you walk in, take a deep breath and it hits you: the unmistakable scent of tomato leaves.
There’s nothing quite like the green, vegetal, herbaceous scent of tomato leaf. It’s at once spicy and sweet. It’s not worlds away from the scent of grass but it’s much more complex, more striking.
Because there’s nothing quite like the arresting scent of tomato leaf it has become a real highlight in my Home Scent Practice. I make sure I savour it, inhaling deeply as I snip salad leaves and thin out seedlings. It signals summer, growth and productivity. Every note of its sumptuous greenness rooting me in the season and keeping me, body and soul, aligned with Summer and all it has to offer.
It’s worth growing a tomato plant or two just for the scent of those leaves.