I love the scent of Christmas trees at this time of year, in the same way that I love walking through a pine forest just after it has rained. The fresh pine scent that fills the car as you bring it home and the waft you get as you walk past the tree in the house.

There are plenty of options, particularly bulbs to bring scent and colour into the house, to enjoy some of the outside indoors. They seem to split into three colour schemes, traditional red, sophisticated whites or jewels.

For a traditional Christmas colour scheme of red and green colours Amaryllis (or Hippeastrum) bulbs come in the velvety red of ‘Liberty’ or the even deeper red of my favourite Amaryllis ‘Royal Velvet’. ‘Santiago’ comes in a very Christmassy red and white candy stripe and is even scented. Then there is the most traditional red Christmas plant of all, the Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) with the bright red bracts.

Every year I pot up scented Narcissus Paperwhite bulbs, either ‘Ziva’ or ‘Inbal’ in time to have their scent filling the kitchen around Christmas and into the New Year. The first Narcissus to flower before those in the garden start popping their shoots up, a feeling that the days are starting to get longer and brighter again. Many of the red flowering bulbs and plants also come in white from Amaryllis ‘Mont Blanc’, to Poinsettias and Orchids. To provide a differential in height from the towering Amaryllis and the slender stems of the Narcissus, a pot or basket of Hyacinths ‘White Pearl’ add a different texture to the arrangement with a sweet scent of their own.

Or the pearlescent colours of hyacinths in the vivid blue of ‘Peter Stuyvesant’ and the deep pink of ‘Woodstock’ to create a jewel like theme, with an additional pop of colour from pots of indoor cyclamens (Cyclamen persicum). They come in colours suitable for any theme from bright and deep reds to white and pale and deep pinks to complement the blue and pink hyacinths.