Gardenia? Daphne? I don't think honeysuckle is blooming in August. Nor wisteria. I'm not really sure when Daphne is blooming....

Japanese honeysuckle seems to bloom off and on all summer. Daphne blooms in February. How about Roses?

Heliotrope has a nice vanilla fragrance. Mine bloomed through the heat of summer. I'm in metro-Atlanta, tho. I think the heat intensified the fragrance. Good luck with your book!
Pam

white butterfly ginger is an oldfashioned "pass a long" plant with a delicious scent that blooms in late August in the Southern part of GA. It's such a heady, evening scent, much lighter during the day.
4 O'clocks would also be emitting their night scents, sweet with a slightly citrus touch. Decidedly "southern" smelling.
Grasses are also beginning to bloom and have that honey-hey scent by this time...
As for your veggies:
beets, garlic, carrots, (and other root vegetables) anything cruciferous which includes any of the asian cabbage related families (I grow tatsoi in the winter), swiss chard with it's pretty stems, and many lettuces & celery (I throw a box over them if we are getting a freeze or heavy frost) should take you through most of winter.

GGG

Oh, thank you all so very much! This is great! Now I have a wonderful plethora of flowers that I'd forgotten about. Just thinking about them takes me back to my early childhood memores. I really must take time away from writing and get my yard prepared for winter. You all have helped me realize just how much I need to promise to do better next year. And I need to see if I can get some winter veggies planted.

I'd promised my editor that I'd have this proposal in the mail by Monday, and thanks to you guys, I'll meet that deadline. Hopefully she'll like this book as much as she liked the first one that I sold in August (gee, maybe that's why I didn't pay much attention to what was blooming in August? Hard to smell the flowers when your head is in the clouds! LOL!)

Anyway, if I sell this book, I'll be sure to put you guys in the acknowledgements. And I intend to come back here to pick your brains on how to turn my long-black greenthumb back to, well, green.

I failed to get back to this before your deadline. Oh, well. You got nice helpful answers while I pondered.

What I thought about was lilies: August lilies, which are not lilies at all; Crinums, and Phillipine lilies. GGG mentioned white butterfly ginger, which would have been called in the rural south in previous decades, 'Butterfly Lily.'

The most fragrant and wonderful of all night flowering plants is the 'Night Blooming Cereus' for which your heroine will have to stay up late to experience.

Earlier in the evening there would be the heady fragrance of what Mama used to call 'washpot petunias' -- those faded pink and lavender wild seedlings that smell so sweet after dark. Planted with flowering tobacco which is spicier, they're a combination that is just too, too wonderful. They melt out in the heat in sunny beds, but keep going in part shade right through summer.

Nell

The old homesteads boast wonderful old fashioned roses, many of which can still be found in situ! When I think of old southern gardens, I think of those wonderfully fragrant roses. Look into the wonderful 'Seven Sisters Rose' or any of the noisettes!

The noisettes are so romantic, aren't they? Our own special Southern rose, too.

Foxearth, you are too poetic and make me almost ache for the old weed none of the friends who've showered me with passalong plants have had so far. Soon after I moved to Georgia, I visited an old abandoned homestead on a hill for sale that was surrounded with what I only now learn are "washout petunias." It has to have been them. It was a totally entrancing spot, and I meant to come back and rescue some to take home but delayed and the bulldozers came first, then a big house and expensive landscaping, so I'm still waiting.

K8smom, please do hang around and also be sure to let us know the title of your book.

An old fashioned shrub is banana shrub. I think it's michellina or something like that.
Collards and turnips and savoy cabbage will grow during our winters.
If you say your imaginary garden was tended by a Master Gardener since the 40s that would not be correct. The Master Gardener program was started in Washington state in the late 70s.

I'll bet that she didn't mean 'Master Gardener' as in the extension trained volunteers, lol! That term has a much broader meaning....as in master carpenter, master chef, etc. But you're right, she might want to rethink using that term, to avoid unnecessary confusion with that volunteer program.

The flower bloom time this author is asking about is in August.
Seven sisters rose is a once blooming rose that blooms in the spring. I'd love to find old roses that will bloom more consistently in the heat of summer. That is actually a really good topic for this forum!

GGG

I'm asking that you ask your publisher that if this book is to become an audio book and if kudzu is mentioned, please, please tell them how to pronounce kudzu properly. I listen to tons of books and have cringed hundreds of times hearing
it mispoken - the readers say something like cood zoo. Drives me nuts!

Best wishes and I've loved reading everyone's contributions.

Rosie in Sugar Hill