A Complete Guide to One of the Oldest and Most Fragrant Flowers in Cultivation
There is no flower more unfairly maligned in contemporary gardening than the carnation. It has suffered a particular reversal of fortune — once the most prized bloom in the gardens of Roman emperors, Tudor monarchs and Mughal courts, it spent the latter half of the twentieth century languishing in the refrigerated displays of petrol stations, its image reduced to that of a dyed-green novelty or a limp token of obligatory affection. The great perfumer’s flower of European history had become, in the popular imagination, a cliché.
The rehabilitation is underway, and not a moment too soon. Florists and garden designers who know their history have been quietly returning to the carnation for years, drawn by what it uniquely offers: a scent of extraordinary richness and complexity — the famous clove-spice fragrance that Shakespeare called the gillyflower — combined with a hardiness, longevity and floriferousness that most fashionable flowers cannot approach. Grow carnations well, in the right varieties and the right conditions, and you will find yourself wondering why you ever grew anything else.
A Flower Older Than Most Gardens
To understand the carnation is to understand that you are dealing with one of the longest continuously cultivated flowering plants in the Western world. Dianthus caryophyllus — the species from which all modern carnations descend — is native to the Mediterranean, probably originating in southern Europe or western Asia, and has been in deliberate cultivation for at least two thousand years. The Romans grew it and used its flowers to flavour wine. The name dianthus is attributed to the Greek botanist Theophrastus, who called it the divine flower — dios (divine) combined with anthos (flower). The carnation’s common name may derive from the Latin corona (garland), a reference to its ancient use in ceremonial wreaths, or from incarnation, a reference to the flesh-pink colour of the type.
It arrived in Britain with some certainty in the wake of the Norman Conquest, and by the Tudor period it had become one of the defining flowers of the English garden. The Elizabethan and Jacobean passion for carnations — or gillyflowers, as they were almost universally called — was intense and sustained. John Gerard’s Herball of 1597 listed dozens of named varieties. John Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris of 1629 devoted more pages to the carnation than to any other flower. Collectors competed for rare striped and flaked varieties with the same competitive energy that would later, briefly, consume the Dutch over tulips. The carnation was the tulip of its age, before the tulip arrived to displace it.
This passion was not confined to England. In the Mughal Empire, the Emperor Babur listed carnations among his most cherished garden flowers. In France, the oeillet — the carnation — was a flower of the nobility and, later, of republican symbolism. In Spain and Portugal it wove itself into folk culture so deeply that the red carnation became the symbol of the Carnation Revolution of 1974, when Portuguese soldiers placed blooms in their rifle barrels to signal a non-violent change of power. The carnation carries history in its petals in a way that few garden flowers can match.
Understanding the Dianthus Family
Before choosing carnations for the garden, it is worth understanding where the carnation sits within the broader genus Dianthus, because the family is large and the boundaries between groups are not always clearly drawn in nursery catalogues and garden centre labels.
Dianthus caryophyllus is the true carnation — the species from which all carnation cultivars derive, and the parent (with other species) of the modern border and perpetual-flowering carnations. In its wild form it is a somewhat lax, grey-leaved perennial of Mediterranean cliffs and rocky places, producing relatively small, solitary pink or white flowers with the characteristic spicy clove fragrance.
Border carnations are the classic English garden carnation — hardy, clump-forming perennials bred specifically for outdoor cultivation in temperate climates. They flower once, in June and July, producing large, fully double flowers on tall stems of 45 to 60cm. They are reliably hardy in Britain, long-lived in well-drained alkaline soil, and strongly fragrant. These are the carnations of the cottage garden and the cutting border.
Perpetual-flowering (perpetual) carnations are the carnations of the florist’s trade — tall, tender plants bred for continuous flower production under glass. They are not reliably hardy outdoors in Britain and are typically grown in cool greenhouses or polytunnels. Their flowers are large, perfectly formed and often intensely coloured, but their garden usefulness is limited unless you have appropriate protected growing space.
Malmaison carnations are a Victorian class of particular historical interest — large, globular, extremely heavily scented flowers derived from a mutation of a Remontant carnation found at the Château de Malmaison in the early nineteenth century. They were enormously fashionable in Victorian and Edwardian Britain and are now rare, maintained by specialist growers and the British National Carnation Society. They require cool greenhouse or cold frame protection but are worth seeking out for their extraordinary fragrance.
Pinks (Dianthus plumarius, D. x allwoodii and hybrids) are the hardy relatives of the carnation — lower-growing, more spreading, with simpler, often fringed flowers and the same spicy-sweet fragrance, sometimes in even greater concentration. The boundary between pinks and carnations is somewhat arbitrary, and the two have been hybridised freely for centuries. Allwood pinks, developed by Montagu Allwood in the early twentieth century from crosses between pinks and perpetual carnations, are among the most garden-worthy of all Dianthus — combining the hardiness and fragrance of the pink with the repeat-flowering habit and fuller flower form of the carnation.
Annual carnations and dianthus — including Dianthus barbatus (sweet William) and the annual forms of D. chinensis — are treated separately in most gardening contexts, but they are part of the same family and share many characteristics. Sweet William deserves a brief separate mention: it is a short-lived perennial typically grown as a biennial, producing dense, domed flower heads in every combination of pink, red, white and dark crimson, intensely fragrant, and among the most reliable and beautiful of all cottage garden plants.
The Scent Question
No discussion of carnations is complete without an honest account of the scent, because it is central to the flower’s entire case for a place in the garden — and because fragrance levels vary enormously between modern cultivars.
The fragrance of the true carnation is a clove-spice scent of exceptional richness and persistence, derived from eugenol — the same compound responsible for the scent of cloves and allspice. In the best varieties and best conditions (warm days, cut flowers brought indoors, old heritage varieties rather than modern florist types), it is one of the most beautiful and complex fragrances produced by any flower: warm, sweet, slightly peppery, with a depth that carries across a room and a persistence on cut flowers that outlasts the flower’s visual life.
The bad news — and it must be acknowledged honestly — is that many modern carnation cultivars have lost their fragrance, or retain it only in vestigial form. The commercial breeding of perpetual carnations over the twentieth century prioritised flower size, stem length, colour intensity, vase life and productivity over fragrance, with predictable results. A spray carnation from a supermarket bouquet is frequently scentless. This is not the fault of the carnation as a species; it is the consequence of a century of selection for the wrong qualities.
The good news is that fragrance is easy to find if you know where to look. Border carnations, particularly the older named varieties maintained by specialist growers and the British National Carnation Society, are reliably and often overwhelmingly fragrant. Old-fashioned pinks and Allwood hybrids are among the most intensely scented flowers in the genus. Malmaison carnations are famous for a fragrance so powerful it can perfume a room from a single bloom. The key is to buy from specialist sources and to prioritise varieties specifically noted for scent.
The Essential Varieties: Border Carnations
Border carnations are grouped by flower pattern — self (single colour), fancy (striped or edged), flake (striped with one colour on a ground of another), picotee (a coloured edge on a white or pale ground), and bizarre (two or more stripe colours on a yellow or white ground). The pattern classification is part of a formal show tradition that has governed carnation culture for centuries, and while it matters enormously to exhibitors, the garden grower need only know that it describes the appearance of the flower.
‘Doris’ is the most widely grown border carnation in British gardens and one of the most widely grown Dianthus of any kind. Its flowers are salmon-pink with a deeper pink centre, double, large and strongly fragrant. It is technically an Allwood pink rather than a true border carnation, but the distinction is academic in garden terms. It is compact at around 30cm, reliably repeat-flowering, and utterly dependable. First introduced by Montagu Allwood in 1954 and still without a convincing replacement.
‘Gran’s Favourite’ is a laced pink — white petals edged and laced with dark maroon — of great elegance and strong fragrance. An old variety of uncertain origin, widely grown and rightly valued for its combination of delicate appearance and robust performance.
‘Haytor White’ is the benchmark white border carnation — large, fully double, pure white flowers with very strong clove fragrance and robust stems. One of the finest whites available in the genus.
‘Bovey Belle’ is a richly coloured purple-pink border carnation, fully double, strongly fragrant, and among the most reliably hardy and free-flowering of the named varieties.
‘Aldridge Yellow’ provides the yellow element — a warm, soft primrose-yellow in the self category, scented and well-formed. Yellow is an unusual colour in border carnations and this variety is one of the best.
‘Chris Crew’ is a show-quality scarlet self of great depth of colour and reliable performance. Bold and richly fragrant.
‘Lavender Clove’ is exactly what its name suggests — a lavender-purple self with the classic clove fragrance in full measure. One of the most beautiful of the self-coloured varieties.
‘Fair Folly’ is a fancy carnation — white ground with bright rose-pink flushes and markings — of particularly attractive appearance and strong scent. Has been in cultivation for decades and remains one of the most admired fancy varieties.
The Essential Varieties: Pinks and Allwood Hybrids
‘Mrs. Sinkins’ is one of the most famous of all garden flowers — a Victorian double white pink of extraordinary, almost overwhelming fragrance, with loosely doubled petals that tend to burst the calyx and give the flowers a charmingly dishevelled appearance. Introduced by John Sinkins, superintendent of the Slough workhouse, around 1868 and named for his wife. It is not the neatest of plants nor the most productive of flowers, but the scent is unrivalled in the genus and its history alone would justify a place in any garden.
‘Brympton Red’ is an old single-flowered pink with deep rose-crimson flowers laced with darker crimson — elegant, intensely fragrant and vigorous. One of the finest old pinks in cultivation.
‘Sops-in-Wine’ is a heritage variety of great antiquity — a small-flowered, dark-centred pink whose clove scent carries the full weight of its centuries-old lineage. Loosely double, maroon-purple with a pale edge.
‘Inchmery’ bears semi-double pale shell-pink flowers of great delicacy and a fragrance that is sweet rather than spicy — one of the softest and most elegant of all pinks.
‘Whatfield Joy’ is a reliable modern pink with fully double cerise-pink flowers and strong fragrance, compact and free-flowering over a long season.
‘Devon Cream’ offers creamy-white double flowers — a colour uncommon in pinks — with good fragrance and a neat, mound-forming habit.
‘London Delight’ is a laced pink in the grand tradition — soft lilac-pink petals laced with purple, strongly scented, and among the most refined of all the old named varieties.
The Essential Varieties: Sweet William
Sweet William deserves recognition as a distinct plant with its own considerable garden merit, rather than being treated merely as a footnote to the carnation family.
Dianthus barbatus ‘Sooty’ bears flowers of the deepest possible near-black crimson on compact plants — dramatic, richly coloured, and strongly fragrant. The darkest of all sweet Williams and one of the most striking.
‘Nigrescens’ group covers the very dark-flowered forms generally, with flowers ranging from deep crimson to near-black-maroon. Sowing these as a biennial in June or July for the following year’s flowering produces some of the most atmospheric spring combinations available.
‘alba’ — the white forms — are invaluable for evening gardens and white schemes, their fragrance carrying particularly well on still summer evenings.
‘Auricula-Eyed’ sweet Williams have a distinctive pale eye at the centre of each flower, creating a two-tone effect that makes the dense flower head particularly lively and complex.
In the Garden: How to Use Them
The carnation’s natural garden habitat is the traditional English cottage garden or cutting border, and it performs there as well as anything. But it is more versatile than this single context suggests, and a considered approach to how it is planted can elevate it well beyond nostalgic association.
The cutting border is the most natural home for border carnations. Grown in rows alongside other cutting flowers — sweet peas, dahlias, Ammi majus, sweet William — they provide long-stemmed blooms from June to August that are among the most beautiful and fragrant of all cut flowers. A mixed vase of border carnations, sweet peas and Alchemilla mollis is as good as any cut flower arrangement available at any price.
The cottage garden border suits pinks especially well. Low-growing, mound-forming and spreading to fill gaps between other plants, they combine beautifully with old roses, hardy geraniums, Nepeta, Salvia and Alchemilla. The classic English partnership of old roses and pinks — both sharing the same preference for alkaline, well-drained soil and both producing their best in June — is one of the most reliably beautiful of all garden combinations.
Raised beds and walls suit carnations and pinks very well, as both thrive in the excellent drainage that these situations provide and both look completely natural spilling over a stone edge. Dianthus planted at the tops of dry stone walls, where the roots can penetrate the alkaline mortar and the drainage is perfect, often proves more vigorous and longer-lived than the same variety planted in open border soil.
Container growing is a natural fit for pinks, which are compact enough to thrive in terracotta pots and produce their fragrance at close quarters where it can be most appreciated — beside a bench, on a windowsill, by a door. Use a gritty, free-draining compost and do not over-pot.
The greenhouse or cool conservatory is where Malmaison and perpetual carnations belong, and the investment in protected space is repaid by flowers from November to May — a season when outdoor blooms of comparable quality and fragrance are effectively unobtainable.
Cultivation
Carnations and pinks share a set of cultivation requirements that are specific but not difficult, and understanding them explains both why these plants sometimes fail and why, in the right conditions, they can live and flower for a decade or more.
Soil and drainage. The single most important factor in carnation cultivation is drainage. These are Mediterranean plants at heart, and they will not tolerate waterlogged soil under any circumstances. Prolonged winter wet is the primary cause of failure in Britain. In heavy clay soils, raised beds, grit incorporation and mounded planting can all help, but the honest advice is that the drier, more alkaline soils of southern and eastern England suit carnations considerably better than the heavy, acid soils of the wetter west and north.
pH. Carnations and pinks are lime-lovers and perform markedly better in neutral to slightly alkaline soils. On acid soils, incorporating lime before planting and top-dressing with garden lime annually will help, but the improvement is often marginal on very acid soils. Where pH cannot be adjusted, container growing in a gritty, lime-incorporated compost is the more reliable approach.
Sun. Full sun is essential. Carnations in shade produce excessive foliage, weak stems and few flowers. They should receive a minimum of six hours of direct sunlight per day.
Planting. Plant with the crown slightly above the soil surface, never buried. Firm planting is important — push the soil down around the roots and tread in gently. Freshly planted carnations often look alarmingly floppy for a week or two before the roots establish.
Feeding. A low-nitrogen, high-potassium fertiliser applied in spring and again in early summer encourages flowering rather than foliage. Avoid high-nitrogen feeds, which produce lush, floppy growth susceptible to disease. A handful of bonemeal worked into the soil at planting time and a top-dressing of garden lime in autumn are the traditional border carnation regime, and it works well.
Staking border carnations. The tall stems of border carnations need support, and staking is the one aspect of carnation cultivation that does require some effort. Proprietary carnation rings, or individual small canes with soft ties, are placed in late May or early June before the stems elongate. Each stem carrying a flower bud should be individually secured. This sounds laborious and, in large plantings, it is — but the alternative is a June windstorm laying waste to the whole border, which is more laborious still.
Disbudding. For exhibition-quality flowers and for cutting, border carnations are disbudded — all buds except the central terminal bud are removed from each stem, allowing the plant’s energy to concentrate into producing a single large, perfect bloom. For garden effect, disbudding is optional: leaving the side buds produces a more informal, multi-flowered stem of smaller blooms that is often more pleasing in a border context than the rigid perfection of the exhibition flower.
Layering. Border carnations are traditionally propagated by layering — a technique borrowed directly from the plant’s natural tendency to root where its stems touch the ground. In July or August, after flowering, a healthy non-flowering shoot is selected, a shallow cut is made through a node, and the wounded portion is pinned to the soil with a wire staple and covered with a mound of gritty compost. Roots form within six to eight weeks, after which the new plant can be severed from the parent and grown on. This is the traditional method, widely used by show growers, and it produces strong plants more reliably than cuttings from most cultivars.
Pinks from cuttings. Pinks propagate readily from cuttings — simply pull a non-flowering side shoot from the plant (a ‘piping’), trim to just below a node, insert in gritty compost and keep in a cold frame or on a cool windowsill. They root within three to four weeks and are among the easiest of all perennials to propagate by this method.
Longevity. Border carnations and pinks can be very long-lived in appropriate conditions — specimens of ten, fifteen or even twenty years are recorded. However, many modern cultivars begin to decline after four or five years, and the traditional practice of taking cuttings or layers every two or three years to maintain young, vigorous stock is good practice regardless of the apparent health of established plants.
Pests and disease. Carnation rust (Uromyces dianthi) produces orange pustules on leaves and stems and can be troublesome in wet seasons. Remove and destroy affected material and improve air circulation. Fusarium wilt causes sudden wilting and collapse of plants and is the most serious disease problem — affected plants should be removed and the soil in that area not replanted with Dianthus for several years. Aphids attack young growth in spring. Red spider mite can be a problem under glass. Rabbits and deer are sometimes attracted to Dianthus foliage.
The Show Tradition
The carnation has a formal exhibition tradition in Britain that is centuries old and still very much alive. The British National Carnation Society, founded in 1949, organises shows, maintains a register of named cultivars and provides a network of specialist growers from whom heritage varieties can be sourced. The formal judging of border carnations at shows follows rules established over centuries, classifying flowers by pattern (self, fancy, flake, picotee, bizarre), assessing calyx, stem, petal placement and fragrance according to a precise system.
This tradition matters to the garden grower for a practical reason: it has kept alive hundreds of named varieties that would otherwise have been lost. The show circuit is the reason that ‘Bookham Fancy’, ‘Leslie Rennison’, ‘Eva Humphries’ and dozens of other heritage border carnations are still available today, maintained by growers who enter them in competition and sell surplus stock to gardeners. Without the show tradition, the carnation’s heritage would be very much poorer.
The RHS also holds National Collections of Dianthus, and visiting these collections at peak flowering time in June and July is one of the most effective ways to assess varieties before committing to a planting.
Carnations and the Perfumer’s Art
The connection between the carnation and the perfume industry deserves brief mention, because it helps explain why the flower was so highly prized for so many centuries by people who took fragrance seriously.
Carnation absolute — a concentrated aromatic extract produced by solvent extraction of the petals — was for centuries one of the most important raw materials in high perfumery, used as a base note in countless classic French fragrances. The famous spice-clove character of the carnation translates in perfumery into an aromatic warmth and depth that eugenol-based synthetics can approximate but not fully replicate. The great carnation soliflore fragrances — scents built primarily around the note of carnation — include among their number some of the finest and most complex perfumes ever made.
This perfumery heritage explains something about how carnations should be planted in the garden: en masse, where the accumulated fragrance of many blooms creates something approaching the immersive experience of a true carnation scent, rather than as isolated specimens whose individual fragrance, however fine, fails to reach the nose from a distance. A bed of thirty or forty border carnations in full June flower, in a still garden on a warm afternoon, produces a fragrance experience with few rivals in horticulture.
Why the Rehabilitation Matters
The carnation’s fall from favour in the latter twentieth century was a loss felt mainly by those who had never known it in its proper form — which is to say, as an old-fashioned double pink or a well-grown border carnation in a June garden, fragrant to the point of intoxication, perfectly at home against old stone walls and among the roses. The supermarket carnation, scentless and stiff-stemmed and dyed to improbable colours, has done the genus a disservice from which it is only now beginning to recover.
There are signs of a genuine renaissance. Specialist nurseries report increasing demand for old-fashioned pinks and heritage border carnations. Young florists are returning to fragrant flowers generally and to the carnation in particular, recognising that a clove-scented border carnation in a hand-tied bouquet offers something that no other flower in commercial cultivation can quite match. Garden designers who have spent the last decade exploring naturalistic planting are rediscovering that the cottage garden, practised with intelligence and planted with historic varieties, is one of the most beautiful garden styles available — and that carnations and pinks belong at its heart.
The divine flower is reasserting itself. It was only ever waiting to be asked.
Key border carnation varieties to seek out: ‘Doris’, ‘Haytor White’, ‘Bovey Belle’, ‘Lavender Clove’, ‘Gran’s Favourite’, ‘Fair Folly’, ‘Aldridge Yellow’, ‘Chris Crew’.
Key old-fashioned pinks: ‘Mrs. Sinkins’, ‘Gran’s Favourite’, ‘Brympton Red’, ‘Inchmery’, ‘London Delight’, ‘Sops-in-Wine’.
For sourcing, contact: the British National Carnation Society (bncs.net), Allwoods Nursery (allwoods.net), Whetman Pinks, or the RHS Plant Finder at rhsplantfinder.rhs.org.uk.
0 responses to “The Carnation: A Flower That Deserves Better”