Spring 26

New light washes over the land. Fields and hills, hedges, roads. Ordinary England. Then it touches something else. A heady tangle of green and white blossom, organic and unruly. A cacophony of birds. Meadowland. Pools of water, trickling streams.

For Spring 26 we have partnered with Knepp Wilding in Sussex. Together we’ve created a fragrance that emulates the rewilded landscape fostered here for a quarter of a century.

We begin at dawn, with the luminous freshness of spring. A citrus accord of lemon, bitter orange and petitgrain shimmers – then hums into life with timut pepper and ginger root, like insects rising into the sun.

Knepp’s landscape is crowned with a tousle of thorns. Home to rare nightingales in remarkable abundance, this wild scrubland comes to life in spring. The dazzling scents of blackthorn and hawthorn blossom bloom in succession through April and May.

To capture Knepp’s Wildland, we reached for a new ingredient – broom, native to northern Europe. The absolute obtained from this cheerful yellow shrub shares its honeyed florality with the paler flowers of the hawthorn tree. To enrich our clouds of blossom, we called on neroli and rose for their quiet power.

Where we wandered wild meadows with Knepp’s custodians, goat willow and individual hawthorns rose up around us in fantastic shapes. At Knepp they call this ‘goat topiary’, pruned into shape by the animals. For the meadow and its sculptures we reached for more unusual notes – herbal, rooty valerian, which grows wild at Knepp, in a pairing with delicate elemi, a resin with a unique, spiced citrus facet.

Running through the landscape, its most powerful creator is water. At the sides of the streams and pools are trees made abstract. Some have already fallen, leaving conical stumps. Others look ready to topple, drifts of fragrant wood shavings at their roots.

For the mischievous landscape engineers who carved out these strange shapes, we blended red cedar with ho wood. Discover more via your cinema ticket, included in the box.