THE plants to place beside a path where you walk in winter, when their scent will hit you every time you pass by. They make a thicket of stems with glossy leaves, and have insignificantly small creamy flowers, eventually replaced by small, round, black fruit, red in one species. But those flowers are not insignificant - they produce that wonderful scent, in abundance, for many weeks.

Sarcococca hookeriana (humilis) var. dignya is a compact species with beautifully scented flowers.