Hay fever season can turn allergy sufferers into plant haters. While it is true that many flowers, especially those in the Aster (Asteraceae) family and those that are pollinated by the wind, can bring on an onslaught of symptoms, there are still many, many flowers that should not cause you any sniffles.

Some of the most fragrant garden plants, which you would immediately suspect as being hay fever triggers, are not allergens at all. Flowers like camellias, lilies, and roses, do not have pollen that is dispersed by the wind and they generally do not affect people with hay fever.

However, some highly fragrant flowers that do not aggravate allergies can still be an irritant with their potent scents. In close quarters, they can cause headaches and nausea and may be best enjoyed outdoors and not brought inside. These include gardenia, hyacinth, jasmine, and lilacs. (Many of the French hybrid lilacs and the white or yellow varieties are not as highly scented and should not irritate.)

Of course, there are more and more garden plants that are mainly grown for their foliage, With the flowers removed, these plants will not offend anyone.

Good choices for a garden visited by allergy sufferers include the following.

Azaleas are dependent on insects for pollination. They rarely release it to the wind. Although they are not allergens, all parts of azalea plants are poisonous to humans, and that includes their pollen. It wouldn’t be wise to sniff, an azalea bloom too closely.

Thank goodness begonias tend to shed little pollen since these free-flowering plants are in just about every shady garden. All popular types of begonias are safe bets for allergy sufferers.

The beautiful “flowers” of the bougainvillea plant are the bracts surrounding the flowers. The true tiny, tubular white flowers are inside the colorful bracts and produce very little pollen.

You might not think of cactus plants as having flowers, but they do. Cactus require cross-pollination from another cactus plant to produce viable seed, but they do not rely on the wind to disperse it. Insects and birds take care of that for them.