Sometimes gardens seem like a pleasure only for the eyes (and a pain for the back). But at this time of year, when flowers are winding down for the season, there's a subtler joy to be found in the garden: scent.

Just as some smells draw people more than others, scent attracts beneficial insects to the garden. It's second only to color in luring pollinators to a flower.

And this year, when so much press has been given to the collapse of commercial beehives (what's called colony-collapse disorder, in which the bees leave the hive and never return), any strategy that keeps pollinators around is a good one.

Conversely, many gardeners swear by "companion planting" when designing their vegetable gardens. Centuries of experience, if not much definitive research, support the idea that a ring of strongly scented plants such as onions or basil can help defend vegetables from undesirable visitors.

Practical considerations aside, it's just plain fun to get down (gently, to spare you and the flowers) in the garden and experience the softness and pungent odor of horehound, the fuzzy texture and refreshing scent of lemon balm, or the Tootsie Roll smell of chocolate flower.

Here are some ideas for scent-themed gardens:

• Salvia: The hundreds of varieties of this genus in the mint family include cooking sage as well as basil, oregano and thyme. Thyme's low-growing habit makes it ideal as a ground cover or a filler between stones in a path, where visitors can step on it to release its scent. And salvia includes not only European species but Western and Southwestern natives such as prairie sage (Salvia azurea) and West Texas grass sage (Salvia reptans).

• A "sage" garden: Mix several types of salvia with artemisia (here sage is short for sagebrush), including such natives as big Western sage and fringed sage (Artemisia frigida). Such a garden would be more notable for its foliage than its flowers, and the European salvias might not be cold-hardy.

• A lavender border: Let this feature varieties in white and shades of blue. Lavender is drought-tolerant, looks good throughout the winter and can be made into sachets.

• Lemon: lemon verbena, lemon mint (Monarda citriodora), lemon balm (Melissa officinalus), lemon bush thyme

• Mint and chocolate: mint chocolate geranium, chocolate flower, peppermint, spearmint, pineapple mint, chocolate mint, chocolate cosmos

• Woody and herbaceous plants: arugula, big Western sage, carnations (for their clove-scented flowers), catmint, cilantro, horehound, lavender cotton

• Sweet flowers: lilac, rose, iris, geranium, lily

• A sensory garden: horehound, grasses like feather reed grass and rice grass, snow-in-summer, hen and chicks for the sharp feel of its rosettes, flowers with silky petals such as evening primrose and pincushion flower

• Seasonal scents: spring (arugula, catmint, chives, cilantro, mesclun), summer (basil, mint, thyme, lavender cotton, carnations, shrub roses)

And if you'd rather have someone design a garden for you, check out the "Xeric Aroma Garden" from High Country Gardens, featuring thyme, germander, sage, oregano, lavender and lavender cotton.