Un Jardin en Méditerranée (2003)
by Hermès

A revelation for me. The first time I smelled it, it was like nothing else I had ever tried; flowers, grass, sea breeze, like the best of nature and oh so green!
One of the very few fragrances I'll put on at night when I'm alone as I love it so much.

I hoped so much for this fraganse, so I was very sad to find out that it is not made for my skin, when I finally, on a travel, got the possibility to try it. It is obvious quallity, but don´t come out nice at all on me. There came even an obvious smoke-note after some minutes, who settled down after fifteen minutes.

Now my hope stands to Un Jardin sür le Nile, it smelled divine from the bottle, but it will take a long time until I get the possibility to try it on my skin...

UJdM gets a neutral thumb from me, as I can smell it is a quallity-fraganse. I envy all of you who wears it well!

A lovely breath of fresh air, a fresh breeze through leaves and tree branches and bushes. If a babbling brook scene had a scent this could be it. It's transparent but present, beginning with a combination of twiggy fig and bright citrus, and after about an hour the fragrance dries down to, according to my nose, a very soft cedar, fresh and dry leaf combination.

Another beautifully natural composition for Hermes by Ellena.

When this fragrance first came out, I bought it and enjoyed it for a while. Within one month, the 90% full bottle was already in my bottom drawer with the rest of the scents I no longer wished to wear. The opening floral accord is pleasant and synthetic. This particular synthetic note is one that I find more interesting than annoying at first, but it hangs on and on with little amelioration. The longer it’s there, the more annoying it becomes because of an unpleasant greenish note in it. As for the rest of the fragrance: I don’t see Un Jardin en Méditerranée as either “garden” or “Mediterranean” — I lose any citrus notes within a few minutes, and the artificial floral notes overwhelm. To my nose there really is not much more to the fragrance than those inferior floral renditions. This is one of those fragrances that give me that plastic taste in my mouth when I am exposed to it for longer than a half hour. It dries down into a fig / wood base that is uninspiring and has rather poor longevity.

This scent leaves the bottle all aromatic green, with fresh grassy notes wrapped up in rosemary and lavender, all elevated by a healthy dose of aldehydes. The opening accord immediately brings to mind a dry and rocky Mediterranean landscape, with the blue-green sea daubing the horizon in the distance. Remarkably absent are any of the sweet citrus notes that so many “Mediterranean” fragrances lean on so heavily. Instead, Un Jardin en Mediterranee reveals a soft, pulpy fig and woods accord that completes its Mediterranean landscape. Comparison with Olivia Giacobetti’s Philosykos is inevitable, and the Hermes is a drier, sparer, and more aromatic scent. Giacobetti emphasizes the milky aspect of the fig and the sap in its branches, while Jean Claude Ellena presents the bark and sun-drenched leaves of the fig tree.

Un Jardin en Mediterranee is linear once it establishes it’s fig, woods, and aromatic accord. As with many such light, airy scents it wears close to the skin, and I imagine you’d have to apply a lot of it to build up much sillage or projection.

I bought Un Jardin en Méditerranée because I had already purchased Un Jardin sur le Nil and had fallen in love, so this was a blind buy. I was curious to experience another Hermes. This is probably the best untested purchase I’ve ever made. It was also the first scent in my wardrobe based on fig notes, and the heady warmth of the fig blended with cooler greens and umbers of wood and leaf reminds me of strolling through my summer garden and then heading into the shade of the forest with soft winds wafting the scent of flowers into sunlit breaks of the canopy above. I can see how this is described as unisex; I would love to smell this on a man, but I will be content with sniffing it on myself. It is a peaceful scent but not languid, comforting but not cloying, and the counterpoint between soft honeyed fig and sharper notes I can’t place, make it an interesting puzzle. Just when I think it says one thing, another elusive note appears. The orange blossom never dominates, it whispers softly, weaving in and out of the cedar and leaves. Strangely, though the name invokes the Mediterranean, this has no seashore notes at all for me. I live in the mountains, and this is very much a scented glade in the dell.