Un jardin sur le toit review năm 2024

I, for one, have been impatiently waiting for Un Jardin sur le Toit to be released, since I am a declared Ellena fan and I love two of the three previous scents in the series and am intrigued and challenged by the third. Last Friday the Hermes boutiques launched Un Jardin sur le Toit – a garden on the rooftop, so I braved the haughty SA’s at the Vienna boutique and was pleasantly surprised at their friendliness this time. Maybe this fragrance had something to do with it, also Baby N. did his very best to charm them.

In contrast to the exotic locales of the first three perfumes in the Jardins series, the fourth and newest perfume by Jean-Claude Ellena explores home turf, a garden on a roof in Paris. Not any rooftop garden, but that of Hermes headquarters itself, at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

While the first Jardin perfume centered around the Mediterranean fig, the second around Egyptian mango and the third focused on melon from India, Jardin sur le Toit showcases a fruit very near and dear to our hearts and noses – the apple.

Notes include apple, pear, rose, green grass, basil, magnolia and compost notes.

Jardin sur le Toit opens with a sparkling and wonderfully bright and many faceted accord of apple, pear, grass and citrus notes. It is one of those scents you cannot very well say no to, the top notes are so inviting and so fresh and prickly, they make you smile involuntarily and make picking up a bottle a breeze.

For a second the perfume teeters on the brink of Pomme d’Api* territory, before it segues into a wonderfully complex, but always sheer composition of green, fruity and floral notes.

*Pomme d’Api is a children’s shampoo by Yves Rocher that accompanied me through my childhood, it has an intense green apple note.

Had Un Jardin sur le Toit stayed like that second of bright-green super-apple, I would not have liked it at all. But Ellena’s mastery is apparent throughout. In lesser hands this may have been a fruity, synthetic applejuice disaster à la DKNY be delicious. (Which certainly has its fans, to whom I apologize, this is just my personal opinion after all.)

In its heart, Un Jardin sur le Toit is still very green, the grass, even a little earth and herbs (I smell basil) are clearly there, but I was surprised by how floral it is. Rose and Magnolia make a lovely pink bouquet that balances the green apple nicely, as to not let it take over the fragrance.

The drydown is striking and decidedly different from the other Jardins. The fruity notes subside slowly, leaving behind the naturalistic notes that so beautifully evoked the rooftop garden, and take on an abstract shape, a “real perfume” emerges. I like to think that is Ellena’s way of telling us – “Hey, we are in Paris! And this is what Paris smells like after all.”

Un Jardin sur le Toit lasts a long time for an Eau de Toilette, this is no gone-in-an-hour-summer scent, but it stays – always light, quiet and reserved, mind you – but present and distinctive for at least six hours on me. Decidedly longer than the other three in any case, although their longevity is not so bad either.

Un Jardin sur le Toit is surprising at first, but when you think about it, it is a perfect and quite literal interpretation of a locale, as were the others. A garden in a city, in a city like Paris, there is the undeniable coming together of two worlds.

Un Jardin sur le Toit manages to masterfully unite nature and urban environment, thus depicting what it says it would, what the beautiful artwork on the packaging shows – a garden on a rooftop.

That is a place where I would love to stay. As long as Paris is that far away, a bottle of Un Jardin sur le Toit does just fine in getting me there in an instant.

All it takes is to close my eyes.

If you would like to try Un Jardin sur le Toit yourself, I have a sample vial to give away, courtesy of the nice Ladies at the Vienna Hermes Boutique. GIVEAWAY CLOSED!

To participate just leave a comment telling me what your favorite Jean-Claude Ellena creation is. The draw closes on Friday, April 8 midnight GMT. International entries welcome.

Un Jardin sur le Toit is a lively, edgy novella. This fragrance describes a secret garden, hidden in the heart of the city, in Paris. A hanging garden, perched on the rooftop of Herms building at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honor.

An apple tree, a pear tree, a magnolia flourish in the Paris air, along with a few self-seeded imposters, all making up this scent of light and pleasure, enticing and full of laughter.

I don't know what it was anymore. This fine pen-and-ink drawing of Paris - where it is most lively and elegant - on the packaging board: everything in delicate black and white except for the summery roof garden up there, in Faubourg, Saint Honoré 24, the flagship of Hermés? Or the description of the scents of this unusual fragrance. But suddenly I had become curious what the scent might be there, in this roof garden in faraway Paris, which gave the perfume its name: un Jardin sur le Toit. It is a magnificent old building in the heart of the city, with a roof garden that everyone would like to have.

In the middle of the urban asphalt jungle it smells and blossoms in bright colours, while the world outside this refuge fades into colourlessness. Idyllic, a refuge, a romantic oasis in the middle of the big city - these are the associations that I immediately notice. Fruit trees, apples, pears, stone figures, a staircase, an English lawn, roses, white blossoms, mallows, magnolias ... a timeless idyll, a place of peace in the daily hustle and bustle ...

Of course I started to research what this famous garden looks like in reality. It's easy to find. You can find him on YouTube, Hermés' magic garden on the roof terrace. And that's not so rare at all.

It's spring right after spraying. No, but it was early summer. Because it gets fruity right away. Pear, it occurs to me, but there it has already risen in a green sweetness. She comes along slightly grassy. If she was a girl, she'd probably have freckles and a straw hat. And smiles at you. She saunters along, long, slender legs, tanned, light shorts. It brings the scent of freshly cut grass with it. Her smile is contagious. She sits with you, carefree, carefree. Everything is suddenly so light - like the little clouds up there in the blue sky. You suddenly feel fresh, cheerful. White flowers - playful and harmonious - conjure up an idyll around you. You enjoy the feeling of silence on a holiday day in summer. The trees shield the heat. But the scent is everywhere: sweet, yes, but also fruity and fresh.

If this fine sweetness had a color, it'd be green. A bright green with white flower spots here and there. The scent makes you feel good. No question about it. But he's not banal. Au contraire! He has his secrets. For a moment, I think I can catch a whiff of rhubarb. And he's gone. But there is something - an herb. That must be lemon verbena. Also the smell of apples hovers around me. But they're still a little immature.

The garden's a little overgrown. High grasses sway in the wind. Rare plants exude grassy scents that tell of summer in a roof garden in the big city. People like to listen to them. Because they're poetic stories. A bit of Oscar Wilde.

The fragrance has gradually become a bit more bitter and dry. The aroma of wild grasses and herbs blows around me. The sweetness is slowly becoming a memory. The freshness is now that of just cut grass. An enchanting scent that I will never forget, I think.

Last summer I was seduced by Hermés' spicy citric unisex fragrance Concentré de Pamplemousse rose, but next summer I will be accompanied by the scent of jardin sur le toit. Sweet, spicy, dry, fresh, green and in between always fruity. A fragrance that immediately evokes memories: summer, garden, holidays ...

I must think of Leo Tolstoy: "All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" And reflect on whether all the gardens in which you were once happy, look alike in fragrance.

My garden is in the past. In fact, he was in Hamburg, on the outskirts of the city. Behind it, it was already rural. Gentle, black-and-white cows grazed there, which we fed with drop apples. Sometimes I wonder if it still exists, this garden of my childhood. But even if he still exists, he will remain closed to me forever. After the death of my grandmother, my parents sold the house and garden where I spent countless holidays I sniff the back of my hand and think of my grandparents' garden. Do I recognize the scent? Yes, some notes are familiar to me: the freshly mown lawn, the fall apples, roses and berries. Everything somehow disordered, but inspiring.

The fragrance does not exhaust itself in fruit sweetness, fresh grass and white flowers. It is demanding - perhaps because it brings the garden idyll to a meta-level. I see the individual components happily whirling around in the playful battle for supremacy. This is not about concrete scents, but about emotions and impressions that briefly light up and immediately mix again in the round dance: cool, precious, fresh, green; fruits, dry sweetness, powdery, seductive, idiosyncratic. Close to nature and yet luxurious like queens playing shepherdesses in the park of Versailles. Pear, rosemary, apple, rose, grass, magnolia. Fruity, floral, juicy, but also light, airy. Still reasonably durable. High quality, but also somehow unfathomable and charmingly contradictory.

I sit under the apple tree and suddenly enlightenment comes to me: you can only enjoy this scent when you stop trying to fathom and analyse it. Just take him as he is, with open arms. Do you have to check or compare it all the time? I'm trying to re-experience him, unbiased. Now he seems trendy to me, dry, unisex, but nevertheless romantic in his own way. It has something longing and promising - like every beginning of summer.

If no one else gives you a Christmas present, you just have to give yourself something that brings joy. So I dared and ordered this not entirely cheap fragrance on the Internet, in a now or never action for Women's Day or something. Fortunately, the blind purchase was not a bad buy. I've sprayed the scent on several times at home and was happy about it. But I won't wear it properly until the beginning of summer. But then a lot, I already know that!

When I held the bottle in my hand for the first time, I already suspected that I would like the perfume: a dream of translucent green heavy crystal glass with rounded corners and edges. It's heavy at all - so not necessarily a case for the handbag to spray on (of course, I immediately indulged myself in the 100 ml edition...) - but it's still transparent, airy, clear and fresh, so it goes perfectly with the fragrance, which has the same qualities.

Durability and Sillage are not bad. The intensity was too low at first. In the meantime I know that the fragrance must not be too intense, because otherwise its transparency and lightness would no longer be noticeable.

Although the EdT is about 8 years old, I still find the fragrance refreshingly innovative and trendy. Anyone who enjoys sophisticated new fragrance creations that playfully combine natural magic with luxurious urban flair such as this Jardin sur le Toit will love this fragrance. Jean-Claude Ellena has really succeeded in doing something here that not only reflects the zeitgeist with its contradictions, but even condenses it. Is that poetry?