It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.

Beauty follows when you stop chasing it

There's something quietly rebellious about choosing fragrance over appearance in a garden. We live in an image-obsessed world where Instagram aesthetics dominate how we design our spaces, so Stevenson's advice cuts against the grain. He's suggesting that if you follow what genuinely pleases your senses—what smells good to you—the visual beauty will naturally follow. It's less calculated, more honest.

The insight works because scent and sight aren't actually at odds; they're just operating on different frequencies. A garden planned around lilacs, roses, jasmine, or lavender will almost certainly be beautiful too, but that beauty becomes a byproduct rather than the goal. You're not forcing anything. This applies beyond gardening too—when you choose what genuinely moves you rather than what looks good on paper, you often end up with something more compelling anyway. A career path chosen for passion, a room decorated around comfort instead of trends, a life oriented toward what feeds you rather than what impresses others. The eyes do take care of themselves when you stop optimizing for them.