Un Jardin en Méditerranée

Hermès launched Un Jardin en Méditerranée in 2003. It is the first of the Parfums-Jardins, a collection that brings together, according to the house, the soul of a place, the perfumer’s inspiration and the theme Hermès chooses each year to guide its creations.

Jean-Claude Ellena composed the fragrance. Hermès sees in it a walk through a secret garden in Tunisia, overflowing with trees and flowers, an unusual oasis where olfactory, visual and tactile sensations mingle.

Leïla Menchari’s garden

This garden belonged to Leïla Menchari, born in Tunisia, who designed the Hermès shop windows for four decades. She played host at her house in Hammamet, Dar Henson, which she inherited in the 1970s from Violet and Jean Henson.

Ellena found the inspiration for the fragrance there, built around the fig tree. Leïla Menchari died in April 2020; the tributes published after her death recall that the scents of her garden gave birth to Un Jardin en Méditerranée.

The first stone of a collection

Ellena extended the series with Un Jardin sur le Nil in 2005, Un Jardin après la Mousson in 2008, Un Jardin sur le Toit in 2011 and Le Jardin de Monsieur Li in 2015, five gardens he signed alone.

Christine Nagel, who has led fragrance creation at Hermès since 2016, signed Un Jardin sur la Lagune in 2019, the sixth in the collection and the first by her hand, inspired by a secret garden in Venice.

The house’s own words

Hermès today describes the fragrance as fruity and woody and names three main materials: the fig tree, green lentisk and oleander. It classes it among fresh and delicate emotions and places it in the women’s universe of its perfumery.

Ellena gave a definition of it that the house publishes: “An expression in perfume of a Mediterranean memory, a mosaic of olfactory, visual and tactile sensations.” The house adds the image of a garden of shade, water and light, where the fig tree is blended with Mediterranean zests.