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When I walk into the house from outside nowadays, the first thing I do, even before I acknowledge the cats winding around my feet or sort the mail, is notice the fragrance coming from the flowers on one of my houseplants. Just as when I first step outside on a lilac day in spring, I stand still to drink in the scent before it fades. (There must be some sort of shut-off valve in our noses. I only wish it served to protect us from obnoxious perfumes and dog smells rather than from scents like lavender, beach roses, honeysuckle and sweet olive.)

It’s difficult enough to describe scents, but the strong fragrance coming from the tiny stem-born flowers on my sweet olive truly defies attempt. Sweet? Yes, definitely. But not insipid. Warm as the sun on a crisp day. Deep as vanilla and almost as tempting to taste. How would you describe apricot?

Given that osme is Greek for fragrant, anthos means flower and fragrans is Latin for you guessed it, then Osmanthus fragrans is the perfect name for this super-fragrant plant with otherwise insignificant flowers. Its leaves are as deep green and leathery as bay but not useful in soup. Where hardy (USDA zones eightish to 11 — so close as we’re zone six/sevenish) it will take its time to become a 10-foot evergreen tree or shrub suitable for a corner that is slightly shady in midsummer.

As a houseplant, it may be kept stunted in a pot, pruned in spring and given as much winter sun as is available in your house. It would prefer to be out on a chilly porch (it can take temperatures down in the teens after all) but I will trade a little plant-torture guilt for that scent in my living room any day. I water mine once every week or two, whenever the soil looks like it might be starting to dry out. And when the plant begins to look tired or stops putting out its lovely winter fragrance, I’ll move it out to the south-facing entry porchlet, known in my household as “the plantry.”

By then, perhaps, it would be time for the pink jasmine to come in. Jasminum polyanthum (also known as winter jasmine) needs a few weeks of cool nights below 50° in order to set buds. Once the pink-tinged buds are set and ready to open into bright-white flowers — usually some time in January — I bring the plant in from the plantry so that the scent of California can clear the air through the entire house. I know what you New Englanders are thinking (it takes one to know), but believe me, maybe the best thing about the other coast is that its gardens smell like jasmine.

This plant also wants the sunniest winter window and may go dry between watering. Mine has not become an unwieldy tangle (which would be gorgeous in a hanging basket), but if it did, I could cut it back hard after flowering. As a matter of fact, I did cut it back, which might explain its manageable size.

Buds haven’t actually formed on my jasmine yet. Although I’m generally in favor of tough love and benign neglect, winter-blooming houseplants respond to feeding with more blooms. There’s not a lot of nutrition in potting soil (none actually unless you added some granular fertilizer or compost to the potting mix) and if you’re like me and haven’t re-potted the jasmine in a year or two, it could do with a dilute liquid fertilizer in the watering can every couple of weeks to encourage blooming. Non-blooming houseplants on the other hand, should wait to eat until a new growth cycle starts in spring.

Maybe if my house always smelled of the delicious things my chef cooks I wouldn’t care if it ever smelled like flowers. But in between suppers, any house closed against the weather can begin to smell stale (if not worse.) Houseplants, in flower or not, earn their keep as all-natural air fresheners — purifiers even. And they’re far and beyond prettier than anything you plug into a socket.

Kristin Green is the interpretive horticulturist at Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum in Bristol. She has worked at Blithewold since 2003 and has written their garden blog (blog.blithewold.org) since 2007.