Forget Florals—Perfume Experts Are Looking to Tomato, Carrot and Beetroot for Trending Fragrances Right Now

Fragrance’s latest obsession takes root surprisingly close to home: the back garden. While the great outdoors has inspired perfumers for centuries, this new wave of scents draws on familiar scenes and aromas, including dew-dropped English meadows and the spoils of your allotment’s vegetable patch and herb garden.

It may sound odd if you’re partial to saccharine gourmands, but when scents like rosemary, rhubarb, and tomato are translated into olfactory form, they’re transformed. There’s an earthy groundedness, but also a sweetness, and if the composition leans herby, it can be invigoratingly botanical. There’s a freshness that’s nuanced, textured and completely transformative—they’re familiar, but with a hint of the surreal.

It reflects a broader shift, too: As a society, we’re becoming increasingly green-fingered. Research facilitated by Greenpeace, through freedom of information requests, found that the number of people waiting for an allotment space has almost doubled in the last 12 years. The charity chalked it up to the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as a desire to combat the mental load of climate change, and the cost of living crisis.

Niche perfume houses have been tapping into the movement for a while. First there was Loewe with its release of the now-iconic Tomato Leaves Candle in 2020. Next, Officine Universelle Buly released an extensive collection on the theme, The French Gardens, inspired by an antique collection of 18th-century botanical seeds and seedlings purchased by co-founder Ramdane Touhami. The six resulting fragrances feature unconventional, verdant notes of Scandinavian redcurrant, Peruvian tomato, Andean verbena and Ulu basil.

But this summer, the trend hit the mainstream. Just last month, Jo Malone debuted its limited-edition veggies collection: a trio of colognes evoking ripe beetroot, butternut, and carrot, with home products inspired by green tomato vine and tomato leaf.

So why now? “We’re seeing a shift away from fragrances that feel overly polished or overtly sweet, towards ones that feel alive and transportive,” explains the founder of niche, luxury fragrance brand, LUMIRA, Almira Armstrong. “Garden-inspired fragrances capture that beautifully. They evoke crushed herbs, warm leaves, citrus trees and sun-soaked greenery, creating the feeling of stepping into a living landscape rather than simply wearing perfume. People are craving authenticity and a stronger connection to nature. These fragrances feel restorative, sophisticated and quietly luxurious… They tell a story through atmosphere rather than obvious florals or gourmand notes.”

They’re also exceedingly wearable, adds Cherry Cheng, founder of fragrance brand Jouissance. “Green, aromatic, and vegetable notes tend to feel inherently genderless because they're rooted in nature and tend to sit outside traditional ideas of masculine and feminine perfumery.”

Most of this category taps into the everyday, so expect notes of tomato leaf, basil, mint, rosemary, thyme and cucumber. But there are others that evoke a mood, like sun- or rain-drenched grass, overgrown orchards, warm earth, and freshly cut greenery. These compositions rely heavily on familiar notes of petitgrain, neroli, vetiver and moss; they are just used differently. “They’re not meant to smell literally like vegetables,” Armstrong notes. “Instead, they recreate the freshness of stems, leaves and herbs warmed by the sun.”

Of course, we’ve also been drawn to these fecund scents because of the unprecedented heatwave that has gripped most of Western Europe. As the temperatures rise, people naturally gravitate towards fragrances that feel cooling, airy and refreshing, adds Armstrong. “Green notes, aromatic herbs and citrus all create that sensation without feeling heavy. Summer also heightens our memories of gardens, fresh produce and time spent outdoors,” she says. “Scent is closely connected to memory, so fragrances featuring basil, tomato leaf or citrus can instantly transport us to long lunches, Mediterranean holidays or afternoons spent in the garden.”

Ahead, the best, most invigorating, garden-inspired scents to shop this summer.