Un Jardin sur le Nil

Hermès launched Un Jardin sur le Nil in 2005, two years after Un Jardin en Méditerranée, the first of the Parfums-Jardins. Jean-Claude Ellena composed it after a trip to the island gardens of Aswan, in Egypt, and the house reads in it the story of a river synonymous with life and generosity.

A river for a theme

Every year, Hermès chooses a theme to guide its creations, and the Jardins collection follows it. According to Chandler Burr, the theme chosen for this second Jardin was the river, and the project took Ellena all the way to the Nile in search of his materials.

The idea was born of a walk through an orchard of mango trees still bearing green fruit, on an island garden in the river. Ellena was looking, in his own words published by Hermès, for “green and vegetal scents; the smell of water and sand.”

A fragrance with a story

Chandler Burr observed the creation of the fragrance up close. His 2005 article for The New Yorker, “The Scent of the Nile,” describes Ellena’s arrival at Hermès and his first trials; he expanded it in 2008 into a book, The Perfect Scent.

The book tells in parallel the birth of Lovely, Sarah Jessica Parker’s first fragrance. For Persolaise, this central place in the book gave Un Jardin sur le Nil a status few fragrances ever enjoy.

Hermès then made Ellena its first in-house perfumer, in charge of all its creations for about a dozen years. Denise Hamilton of the Los Angeles Times credits the fragrance with bringing green mango into mainstream perfumery.

Un Jardin sur le Nil today

The eau de toilette is sold in 30, 50 and 100 ml bottles, which a 200 ml refill can fill again. The house presents it as green and woody, fresh and delicate, and lists green mango, lotus and sycamore among its main materials.