Summer 25

We grow our *Tagetes* marigold on the sundrenched valleys and hillsides of South Africa’s Eastern Cape, where the orange-gold blooms flourish in the region’s warm and semi-arid climate. The flowers are hand-harvested at the height of their bloom, when their aroma is at its peak. The petals, stems and leaves are then steam-distilled onsite, just hours after harvest. 

The marigold owes its name - *Mary’s gold* - to early Christian lore. It is said that, in place of coins, devotees laid marigold blossoms at the feet of St Mary, Jesus’ mother, believing she had once used the flowers as currency. Tagetes is Latin, deriving from Tages, a prophet in Etruscan mythology who sprang out of a deeply-ploughed furrow - it’s thought that the flowers were named for this legend, for they too spring up out of ploughed earth.

Marigold- a fragrance ingredient from Eastern Cape, South Africa, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Marigold

Herbaceous

Fruit

Earth

Spice

This member of the magnolia family has beautiful bright orange and yellow petals, attracting bees and birds with its fragrant flowers. Its oil, extracted using a solvent extraction method, is red, and produces a scent that is sweet, floral and fruity. Our red champaca is sourced from the Indian Himalayan Region, where the flowers are often floated in bowls of water to scent a room. 


Red champaca flower- a fragrance ingredient from Indian Himalayan Region, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Red champaca flower

Floral

Aromatic

Fresh

Sweet

Cardamom is a tall, reed-like perennial shrub native to South Indian and Sri Lanka. The mature fruit takes the form of a capsule-like pod that holds within it around twenty small, aromatic seeds. The cardamom we use at Ffern is grown in Guatemala and the essential oil is extracted by steam distillation of the seeds. The fragrance is fresh and citrusy whilst possessing a spicy warmth. 


Cardamom seed- a fragrance ingredient from Alta Verapaz cloud forests, Guatemala , used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Cardamom seed

Wood

Warm

Our blood orange rind comes from the sun-drenched groves of Sicily, where the tree is native. The island’s unique microclimate, with its fertile volcanic soil and temperate coastal breezes, creates the perfect conditions for these distinctive fruits to grow. 

Blood oranges get their characteristic dark flesh colour from anthocyanins, a pigment which only develops when temperatures are low at night, as during the Mediterranean autumn and winter. Its flavour, and indeed its scent, is unique compared to other oranges, being distinctly berry-like in addition to other classic citrus notes.


Blood orange rind- a fragrance ingredient from Sicily, Italy, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Blood orange rind

Citrus

Sparkling

As you might expect, hay absolute smells like fresh-cut hay, calling to mind the golden afternoons of late summer. It is sweet and evocative, with an almost jam-like undertone. _Foin coupé_ (also known as 'new mown hay') fragrances, were popular around the turn of the twentieth century. But while hay absolute undoubtedly calls to mind a temperate harvest, the plant from which it is extracted is Arctic. The sweetgrass _Hierochloe alpina_ grows wild on the circumpolar tundra, particularly on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, in Svalbard. 


Hay- a fragrance ingredient from Le Midi, France, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Base

Coumarin

Davana belongs to the silver-leafed _Artemisia_ family, and many tiny yellow flowers grow against its soft greenery. It is a fragrant herb with an elusive scent, said to smell completely different on each person who wears it. Native to India, the dried herb has a sweet, dried-fruit aroma that is reminiscent of tea. 


Davana- a fragrance ingredient from Andhra Pradesh, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Davana

Our rock rose grows wild on the plains of Almaden de la Plata outside Seville, Spain. In late summer, the leafy stems of the plant are sickle harvested and plunged into hot carbonated water. This mixture is then distilled to obtain a honeyed, amber resin - labdanum. The plant remains are used as biofuel. Traditionally, labdanum was taken from the coats of goats who grazed the rock rose-covered hillsides of Crete - but times have changed. 


Brown-eyed rock rose- a fragrance ingredient from Andalusia, Spain, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Brown-eyed rock rose

Leather

Honey

Plum

Amber

Our nutmeg grows on the Banda islands of eastern Indonesia. These islands - the original source of nutmeg - were a global secret throughout the 15th century, until in August 1511 they were discovered by a Portugese general, and the European race for nutmeg trade dominance began. Today the fruit is harvested with handheld telescopic pickers and left to dry in the shade - the seed oil is then steam distilled at source.


Nutmeg- a fragrance ingredient from Banda Islands, Indonesia, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Nutmeg

Powder

Resinous

Grapefruit oil is cold pressed from the fruit’s golden rind. Native to the Caribbean, grapefruit is thought to have been born from an accidental union of pomelo, the largest citrus fruit, and sweet orange. An eighteenth-century Welsh sailor described it as one of the ‘seven wonders of Barbados,’ but it was not scientifically considered distinct from pomelo until the mid-nineteenth century. The essential oil is (unsurprisingly) pretty citrusy and does not differ greatly from orange and lemon oils. However, it has a distinctively herbaceous side, almost woody — a little like vetiver — and a hint of green, slightly minty. 


White grapefruit rind- a fragrance ingredient from Florida, USA, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

White grapefruit rind

Sharp

Mint

Green

Our red cedar wood (also known as red juniper) is grown and harvested in its native Virginia, USA, and principally used for cabinet making. The oil is steam distilled directly from a cabinet maker’s offcuts. It shares the classic woody notes of atlas cedar, but introduces a distinctive ‘pencil’ facet. 


Red cedar- a fragrance ingredient from Virginia, USA, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Red cedar

Pencils

Known also as royal jasmine, jasmine grandiflorum is one of the most sought after ingredients in fine perfumery. To make a kilogram of the absolute takes eight million flowers - these delicate, night-flowering blooms are hand-picked at dawn between June and September in the Indian Himalayas, where the flowers are sacred. The first harvest is offered to the gods; the second is plaited into hair and used to decorate the home; only the third may be used to make the absolute used in fragrance. To avoid any damage to this culture, and to reduce air miles, we at Ffern get our jasmine grandiflorum from India. Ffern nose Elodie Durande notes its mild, fruity sweetness, likening it to apricot jam. 


Jasmine grandiflorum- a fragrance ingredient from Tamil Nadu, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Jasmine grandiflorum

Sweet-floral

Our neroli oil is extracted from the blossom of bitter Seville Orange trees on Cape Bon in northern Tunisia - a peninsula that juts out into the Tyrrhenian sea, across from Sicily. The blossoms are hand-picked in the Spring at daybreak, once dew has formed. The flowers are immediately pressed and distilled - every second they sit in the morning sun detracts from the characteristically fresh scent that wooed Anne Marie Orsini, Princess of Nerola, and won the oil its name. 


Neroli- a fragrance ingredient from Cape Bon, Tunisia, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Neroli

Orange flower

Olibanum (also known as frankincense) is a resin taken from the bark of the Boswellia tree. At Ffern we use _Boswellia carterii_ - a species native to Somalia. The trees grow wild along the Gulf of Aden in northern Somalia, and the resin ‘tears’ are harvested by local collectors over a period of weeks.⁠ By limiting the harvesting to a few weeks of the year, the trees are able to recover and regrow - making it a sustainable and manageable practice.⁠
⁠
Olibanum has been traded in the Middle East and North Africa for some 5,000 years. It is believed that the Babylonians and Assyrians favoured oliburnam for its sweet, woody scent and would burn it during religious ceremonies.⁠


Olibanum- a fragrance ingredient from Gulf of Aden, Somalia, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Olibanum

Incense

Pepper

Old wood

Pine

Known as the ‘golden spice’ for its radiant hue, turmeric has been revered for millennia in both culinary and medicinal traditions. In perfumery, turmeric leaf shares the root’s spicy, woody and earthy character. 

We harvest our turmeric leaf in Tamil Nadu, India, where the spice is native and has been grown for over 5,000 years. The leaves, typically a byproduct of the turmeric root harvest, are hydro-distilled to extract the essential oil. 

Turmeric leaf- a fragrance ingredient from Tamil Nadu, India, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Turmeric leaf

Grown on Calabrian hills overlooking the Ionian Sea, the fruit is harvested by hand and the oil extracted at source. The La Face family planted their first bergamot in the 1930’s and have been mastering the craft of producing citrus oils ever since. They are always our first port of call when it comes to sourcing bergamot and other citruses for our fragrances.


Bergamot rind- a fragrance ingredient from Calabria, Italy, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Bergamot rind

Earl grey

Benzoin Siam is a balsamic resin taken from the bark of the styrax tree. The trees grow wild in the Annamite mountains, Laos. In September, a v-shaped cut is made in the tree bark, and brittle white ‘tears’ of benzoin resin accumulate over a three-week period. This process is known as ‘tapping’. 


Benzoin Siam- a fragrance ingredient from Andalusia, Spain, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Benzoin Siam

Vanilla

Balsamic

We’re incredibly fond of this ingredient. We chose Haitian vetiver over its Javan competitor for its fresher, sparkling notes which work well with our bergamot, and because the root provides such a valuable and sustainable source of employment for the south Haitian community. One year after planting, the roots are excavated, washed, cut, and sun-dried before they can be steam distilled at source.


Vetiver root- a fragrance ingredient from Les Cayes, Haiti, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Vetiver root

Smoke

Root

We grow our pink grapefruit in groves certified by the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) in Veracruz, Mexico, where generations of farmers have perfected the practice of citrus cultivation. Each fruit is carefully handpicked before the rind is cold-pressed while still fresh.

Sweeter and juicier than its white counterpart, pink grapefruit owes its bright, uplifting scent to a higher concentration of aldehydes, a molecule that gives the essential oil its signature sweet-sharp notes - sparkling, fresh and unmistakably citrussy.

Pink grapefruit rind- a fragrance ingredient from Veracruz, Mexico, used by the organic fragrance house Ffern.

Pink grapefruit rind

Bitter

White peach water

Blend

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Our Summer 25 artist is Fumi Imamura. Fumi uses collage and watercolour on translucent paper to create delicate floral works. Her crinkly, multi-layered pieces feature botanical motifs inspired by the landscape of her native Aichi in central Japan, and from Japanese folklore. 

Fumi’s artwork for Summer 25 is called Momo, meaning ‘peach’ in Japanese. The branches of a tree intertwine with summer flowers, inspired by the marigold used in the fragrance. Strong roots reach down into the earth beneath.

Fumi Imamura

The setting sun leaves a blush on the sky’s cheek. Potter’s pink, vermilion, hues of ochre and magenta - and the promise of a golden day tomorrow. As the rhyme goes, _Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight…_

For Summer 25, we wondered if we could recreate such a sunset. Something peach-coloured, spiced and fruity, shading to a lustrous depth and warmth.

We began with the fuchsia sun, burning towards the horizon. For this we turned to the perfect orb of a blood orange, ripe with nectar sweetness.

Radiating out from the sun are creamier tones, where pinks and oranges meet the blue-white of the sky. So of course, we thought of peach. Our nose Elodie experimented with a white peach water, never before used in perfumery. 

Mouthwatering and velvety as only peach can be, the enriched water harmonised with red champaca - a cousin of the magnolia flower, with golden tones of honey and champagne. 

For the pale, shimmering watercolours that wash across the sky, we looked to the cold-pressed rind of a new pink grapefruit we found in Mexico. A distinctive addition to our citrus library, with a wonderfully clear, sparkling facet.

Turning to the stronger hues, close to the horizon, we lit upon turmeric, sourced especially for Summer 25. Its light yellow oil has a truly unique scent profile - peppery heat matched with a green and aromatic freshness.

We’d been floating, up in the sky, but we realised we were missing the scents of the landscape. Leaning back and looking up, drying fronds of meadow grass framing the sunset. 

For this we turned to spices and resins for their dry heat, like baked earth. Cardamom, hay and brown-eyed rock rose - and for the first time fruity, herbaceous marigold, that sunset-coloured flower. 

The land turning gold, before the warm summer night. 


Summer 25 imagines long midsummer sunsets, painted with sparkling pink grapefruit, golden turmeric, blood orange and white peach water - and for the first time, herbaceous marigold, the sunset-coloured flower.

Summer 25

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