Autumn 22

A misted morning in the herb garden. Golden droplets gleam on stems.

In a gently sloping valley south of Somerset’s Quantock Hills lies a biodynamic herb farm. Come September, it brims with sunset colours - echinacea pink, cornflower blues, the blush of marshmallow and calendula’s deep, burnt orange. Rows of cool lavender and bay frame the borders. 

The scent of the garden alone is spectacular, but on days when there is a light breeze it is made all the more complex by the addition of dried spices - cardamom, cumin, clove. These spices, gathered from organic fields around the world and used in blends by the herb farm, bring a warmth to the olfactory landscape, drifting into the green-gold of the surrounding countryside. 

Just along the lane from the herb farm is the Ffern studio, and this heady mingling of herbs & spice has long provided inspiration for our fragrances. For Autumn 22, we decided to recreate it.

We began with a literal interpretation - layering bay, basil, coriander, lavender, cardamom and clove onto a woody base. With the hope of introducing a fresh facet, we then turned to elemi, a pale yellow oil derived from the elemi tree. 

Elemi is a new ingredient for Ffern and hard to pinpoint. It is certainly lemony but also has a green spiciness, like thyme or myrtle, and carries echoes of tea rose. We knew from previous experiments that it pairs beautifully with ginger, so included this here. But we went one step further by adding grapefruit - the light, herbaceous citrus note amplifying elemi’s sparkle.

We were almost there, but something was still missing - a darker note, the call of autumn. After several weeks of experimentation we found it, somewhat unexpectedly, in black tea, another ingredient new to Ffern. Our black tea extract is made from a classic blend of teas from Ceylon, China and India and the aroma is dry and leafy - bringing a smoky depth to the fragrance, both familiar and strange. 

It was the black tea that came to fully realise our vision; transporting us momentarily, like the myriad scents of the herb garden, to the other side of the world.