8 nostalgic garden flowers worth revisiting for charm, aroma

In Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, “Our Town,” heliotrope flowers connect two sets of characters who gather to inhale their intoxicating scent in the moonlight. Heliotropes, then common, are, indeed, wonderfully fragranced. Yet somehow, they’ve fallen out of favor in American gardens.

Many one-time garden staples from the Victorian era through the 1950s have been replaced with hybrids and compact bedding plants, many of which lack the charm, aroma and simple nostalgia of their predecessors.

Here are eight vintage garden flowers worth revisiting:

Four O’Clocks (Mirabilis japala, Mirabilis multiflora)

Fragrant white, red, pink, purple, yellow or bi-color trumpet-shaped flowers open daily in late afternoon and bloom from spring through frost in full to part sun. Plants are low-maintenance, drought-resistant and perennial in zones 8-10. Treat as annuals elsewhere, although they do self-seed readily. Their sweet, lemony scent and shape are a magnet for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus)

Frilly