One of the strangest and fondest childhood memories is when me and my mom moved from Jerusalem to our village in her tiny car, whose trunk was filled to the brim with our houseplants. My mom did not trust the movers to handle them gently enough. So I got to enjoy their green grace through this long ride (only two hours, really, but tremendous length in Israeli terms). Their leaves filtered the sun and made the atmosphere cool and comforting. It was like traveling inside a little jungle, that sang a silent lullaby in my ears.

When we arrived at the village, the plants had a special spot in the shade until our cabin was built (we lived in a hut with dirt floor for a while). And I liked to spray their leaves with water and help my mom care for them.

Decades later, I'm returning to the same village only from much further distance. And I don't trust the movers to take care of my plants so I will hope my friends will adopt them. I don't trust the movers to pack my perfumes and raw materials either, so I'm doing it myself, with the help of some mad friends who I have no idea why they would take on such a task; but nevertheless I'm thankful because without them there is no chance in hell that I will be ready to leave in time.

Also in my suitcase are going some seeds I want to saw of fragrant plants, in what I dream to be a miniature perfumer's botanical garden and an part of an educational project for micro-distillation and old-fashioned extortion methods of fragrant plants. I'll start with some violate (Viola odorata) and green shiso (Perilla), and bulbs of lily of the valley, snowdrops and tuberose that I'll have to remember to unearth from my potted plants... The rest I will have to scout and research once I get there.

VanDusen gardens in mid-fall is not quite as glorious as in the beginning, where the summer's abundance is still apparent; nor as majestic as later in the fall, when the leaves have fully changed their colours, painting the horizon with deep red flames of Japanese maple, burnt orange, russet and caramel from the various deciduous trees.

It is somewhere in between - with the last flowers in still bloom (many of which are purple, I noticed), mushrooms popping up here and there - farewell to all that's sweet and abundant before we fold up the picnic and get in for a long dark winter. Our walk ended at the fragrance garden - a tiny plot packed with flowers, shrubs and bushes that exude scent in one way or another.



You can only imagine my delight finding the fragrance garden still alive with some fragrant energy still intact: sweet peas were what truly invited me to the garden, which looked rather miserable as a whole. Sweetpeas have such a delicate perfume that I'm at loss of words to describe except that I'm sure I've smelled soaps that try to imitate it rather well... Their delightful colours are more dense in the petals' edge, like stains of watercolour.




Scented geraniums (pellargoniums, really...) including musk and apple scented ones. It's the leaves that are fragrant, so that's where the hand symbol should be (curiously, the nice botanical signage did not include the "Fragrance Symbols").


Daphnes, smelling almost exactly like ylang ylang, and somewhat of the lily...



Purple heliotrope still smelled like baked marzipan. Angel's trumpets, which were still saving their scent for the night, 


Tobacco flowers were not in this particular garden, scattered everywhere. It is almost tobacco harvest season...

I was very touched to see a fragrance garden at VanDusen. Vancouver is now known for being particularly fragrance friendly, so it's thoughtful that they have planted an area dedicated to perfumed plants. I hope more people will learn to appreciate scent - if not perfume and the many beautiful fragrances that surround us. I am very much inspired to plan and plant my own fragrant garden. I just need a little more land around me, but that's another story... In the meantime, I'm thankful for the many beautiful gardens in my city, and I hope that you are also fortunate to have gardens you can enjoy. They are truly like sanctuaries.

La Bastide du Parfumeur is a conservatory and a botanical garden nestled between Grasse and Cannes, that has opened just recently - in 2007.

This is an unusual botanical garden. Expect none of the manicured and controlled French garden like those in Paris. What you’ll find here is a wild paradise of fragrant plants and flowers, arrange visually like one beautiful meadow that spills from the hills with endless surprises of unusually fragrant plants (most of which are famous for their use in perfumery, others less known or exotic – such as Seringat and Hymmemosporum). And between them grow in careless abandon unlabeled roses of surprising colours as well as wild oats and other weeds. The beauty of the place is breathtakingly unconventional. And it is arranged according to odour, a classification quite unusual for any garden. You’lld find rustic signs for vanillic notes, woody notes, citrus notes, herbaceous notes, spicy notes and so forth.

The list of sponsors is impressive on its own right (including perfumers such as Le Cristophs for examples), and also from talking to the gardeners I understand that Michel Roudnitska played a key role there in consulting about what plants to use and how to group them together.

Where to find it: 979 chemin des gourettes-06370 Mouans-Sartoux Tél : 04 92 98 92 69

Below are just some of the highlights to hold you over until you go there. Because you must do that.


The garden begins with mint groves that smell more impressive than they look. The Japanese mint is especially green, crisp and sweet and with hardly any camphoreous menthol aspects. And some are more sharp and strange than others. The picture above is of Bergamote Mint, which smells convincingly of bergamote. I'm guessing its the result of high presence of Linalyl acetate.


Next come some spicy and woody notes (I was happy to find Zantoxylum in the raw living form for the first time).
Other beautiful spicy notes belong to the many carnations the trimmed the plots, both pink and white (I spotted 3 types but all photos of one of the fuller-petaled pink ones turned only blurry).


The garden of white flowers included jasmine (not in bloom at the time visited), star jasmine and white roses.

I haven't spotted any plants around the Vanilla notes area, rigth next to the canal at the centre of the garden and across from the white florals - but this sign will give you an idea of how the garden was arranged. Each section had a note category stated by a sign that looked like this:

The fruity notes included sweet juicy strawberry, loquat and Ananas Sage, which is very unusual and mouthwatering with its pineapple-like notes. Of course I couldn't help myself and had a little picnic.




After fruity comes floral...





I really liked how the iris was planted right next to the acacia garden. There are common characteristics for these two notes - powdery, woody and floral and cool. There was only one bush in bloom, since the mimosa season in Grasse is January-February.

This is Seringat, a bush I'm unfamiliar with and am at loss describing its scent. It was floral and a little fruity - perhaps peachy - but I can't remember being able to come up with any other adjectives.




Next come the herbaceous notes, and there are plenty: rosemary, helicrysum, lavender, sage, clary sage, Roman chamomile, etc. and many types of pelargonium, including this strange looking one, Eucaliptus scented pelargonium and one that didn't have a sign and smelled intensely of animalic musk.



This particular helicrysum really smells like curry more than others.

I was surprised at how soft this dangerous plant smells. Sweet and almost coumarin like, despite all the thujone.

Roman chamomile, of course!

The aquaduct is at the centre of the garden and brings a powerful visual element of freshness and coolness, even though the water is neither good for drinking nor for bathing. You have to experience the heat of that Cote d'Azur day to understand it fully...

Notes Hesperide, which is French for citrus notes - here are bitter orange trees with lemon verbena in the space between them. Across from there is a plot with melissa (lemon balm) and lemongrass.
This exotic Australian tree was planted right next to the citrus plants, although it smelled more like a mixture of ylang ylang gand vanilla. There were also many fragrant pittosporums around this area, so judging by the plant's family, this must be the connecting reason. Or perhaps the orange blossom like aroma of some pittosporum blossoms. There is no mention of pittosporum on the garden's map.

Going down to the left side of the garden, there are open fields, less structure, and many wild flowers. I pass by sitting spots, some look sureal and all very beautiful - my favourite being two chairs in the middle of a lavender field. There is one plot for Jasmine (not blooming now), lavender fields and more herbaceous fields including more curry plants, sage and rose geranium. The garden ends with two large plots for Rose de Grasse (Rosa centifolia, aka Rose de Mai), and many wild poppies in pink and red.