I recently attended the Intoxicating Sensory Soirée event at the Chelsea Physic Garden celebrating the garden’s theme for the year – Captivating Scents: fresh, floral, foetid. The evening was a complete success, allowing us to explore the garden after-hours and offering an amazing variety of activities whilst delving into the world of scent.
Penhaligon’s was offering individual scent profiling which was incredibly interesting. We began by describing our ideal scent and the lovely and very knowledgeable Penhaligon’s ladies widdled down our briefs until we’d found our perfect fragrance and then sent us away with lots of samples, goodies and a lovely hankie sprayed with our favorite perfume!
My favorite scent was Lothair, a gorgeous perfume inspired by the tea clipper ships that brought back exotic wares from faraway lands. It opens with a salty tang of grapefruit, juniper and fig leaf, followed by a smokey hart of black tea which is softened by fig milk and magnolia, finishing with a woody ceder and wenge wood base. I dragged my friend along to the scent profiling and although she was a bit skeptical at first she came away having fallen in love with a scent she’d never thought she would like – Orange Blossom – which was a delicious honeyed floral, lush with Calabrian orange and bergamot and tempered with ceder, rose and peach flower. It smelled like sunshine!
We enjoyed ambling through the garden and discovering all the amazing plants and flowers, from an incredible array of chillies to medicinal plants to night scented flowers, whilst sipping Caipirinhas and taking in the setting sun.
There were tours of the garden with Head Gardener Nick Bailey (also designer of the Beauty of Mathematics Garden at the Chelsea Flower show), cooking demonstrations and even pond dipping where we explored the miniature world of aquatic creatures!
The evening ended with a lovely talk and demonstration by Rococo Chocolates and Beefeater Gin who paired chocolate and gin and explained the different flavors and further exploring the role of scent in our lives.
All in all the evening was wonderful! Everyone seemed to really enjoy the activities, the food and drink and generally just spending time wandering through the lush greenery on a warm, breezy August night.
Hopefully the Chelsea Physic Garden will host more events like this in the future!
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