Stock

Meet stock, the flower you smell before you see it. Walk past a bed of it on a cool Dubai evening in January and the air smells of cloves and spice, a warm, spicy sweetness that carries well beyond the bed. The flowers are crowded along upright spikes, white, cream, pink, lavender and purple, with grey-green leaves that give the whole plant a soft, dusty look.

It comes from the Mediterranean coast, where it grows on sea cliffs and old walls on limy soil, and that history suits a Dubai garden better than most bedding flowers manage. It likes sun, sharp drainage and non-acid ground, and NC State lists it as salt-resistant. What it does not like is heat: it is a plant of mild winters, and Dubai only offers them from about November to March.

The mood is old-fashioned and scented rather than showy. Put it where you will brush past it: beside a front door, along a seating area, in pots at the edge of a majlis terrace. Cut a few stems for a vase and the whole room smells of it.

Matthiola incana is a member of the cabbage family, Brassicaceae, native to southern Europe from Spain to Greece. Wikipedia describes it as growing on calcareous soils, often on sea cliffs and old walls, and as widely grown for bedding, cutting and its scent. It is known as stock, Brompton stock, common stock, hoary stock, ten-week stock or gillyflower. NC State describes it as a cool-season perennial that is usually grown as an annual or biennial, 30 to 90 cm tall, with flowers in cream, white, lavender-purple and pink and, in hybrids, yellow and red, and a clove-like scent.

The limit in Dubai is heat. NC State says plants begin to decline when summer temperatures pass about 80 °F (27 °C), and that bloom is shorter in hot climates. Dubai's mean maximum is 26.5 °C in December, 24.4 °C in January and 26.1 °C in February, rising to 28.9 °C in March and 33.7 °C in April, so the display runs from about December to March. Acacia Garden Center lists stock with pansies, violas and sweet peas as cool-weather flowers that put on their best show in Dubai's winter. NC State recommends growing it from seed, and sowing at intervals of about two weeks to spread the bloom.

NC State says stock does best in average to humusy, consistently moist, well-drained soil in full sun, and does not do well in acidic soil, which suits Dubai's alkaline sand once compost is mixed in. It lists it as salt-resistant, but the soil should not be allowed to dry out completely. It reports no serious insect or disease problems, with white mould possible in mild, rainy winters. In Dubai the rain window is December to March, so water at the base and keep the plants spaced for air.