From the Garden

It became unmistakably clear to me—especially with this From The Garden and "Al Haramain Excellent Man"—that you should never rely solely on perfume ratings and comments on Fragrantica when making blind-buy purchases. Tastes are known to differ—whether it’s when choosing a partner or choosing a perfume. I received a tester of this fragrance from Maison Margiela and applied it on a spring afternoon. My first impression was WOW: a photorealistic projection of a tomato garden, highlighted by naturally sweet fruits. An excellent and especially naturally sweet scent. It’s particularly a fragrance you enjoy smelling on yourself for several hours. Over time, the tomato note softens a bit and the aromatic side comes through, which slightly reminds me of Lacoste Style in Play (those who know it will understand what I mean). I perceived the sillage as strong—though that might be because I was using Lalique Encre Noire as my daily driver at the time. This is my first Maison Margiela fragrance, and I’d rate it a solid 8/10. It’s one of the best scents for those first spring days when the sun finally comes out after the winter months. On clothing, the scent was still noticeable the next day—and faintly even the day after that.

I'm in love with this fragrance which I was not expecting at all... I've always been kind of averse to tomato. It's a delicious flavor but something about the savory juiciness of it triggers my gag reflex no matter how hard I try to suppress it. I guess because of that I've never paid attention to the aroma of tomato leaf. Yet this is a smell that instantly brought me back in time. The last time I visited Korea I must have used some product with tomato leaf as a scent because this brings me right back there. One day we rented out a vacation home and my whole family slept in the house together. My grandmas (mom's mother and aunts) slept on the floor of the living room with my sister and I and we ate KBBQ and drank somaek. It feels like a dream to me, to have been among family yet interacting through a veil of gestures and translation. The spicy and fresh embrace of a cherished memory. The feeling of being on the precipice of understanding, of recognition through the hazy filter of time.

I ADORE this fragrance, and had no idea Olivier and Sebastien Cresp were behind it! Go figure -- they’ve created many of my favorite perfumes :-) From the Garden is such a vibrant, hyper-realistic tomato vine scent that leans fruity -- I also get a slightly sweet b.o. hint in the opening which makes me love this all the more. This reminds me of the old school Demeter scents that so skillfully interpreted highly specific smells (if they still make Dirt, this would be a fun one to layer with it!). I have been pining for a bottle of L'Ombre dans L'eau, but this is a close enough cousin it's going to be my budget version for the time being, until I can get a bottle of L'Ombre and layer these two! I also find this layers surprisingly beautifully with Ex Nihilo's Spiky Muse, providing some earthiness to the fruity rose and making for a gorgeous, life-affirming combo! There's nothing happier smelling to me than a tomato vine in the summer 🍅🥰

This is such a beautiful, feel good fragrance. I can’t help but compare it to classics like L’Ombre Dans L’Eau by Diptyque or Un Jardin Sur Le Nil by Hermès, but honestly, this one feels like the most wearable and easy to love of the three. The others might be more complex, louder and longer-lasting, but From the Garden just feels effortless in the best way. What really surprised me is how emotional it is. This is probably the first fragrance from this brand that gave me a proper, almost photographic memory. It instantly takes me to open-air markets in Latin America and South Asia (places I deeply love) filled with fruits, flowers and vegetables you don’t see anywhere else, still a little dusty from the soil they were grown in. It smells fresh, alive, slightly earthy and incredibly real. It’s moving in such a quiet, honest way. Fresh, comforting and completely genuine. I’m genuinely amazed by how much I love this perfume.

If you want to smell earthy and natural but still clean this is your fragrance. I got a free sample of this fragrance from Sephora and OMG I absolutely never expected this one to be one of my favorites. It opens with a sweet and extremely realistic tomato leaf note, and then after a while settles into a clean, comforting, sweet patchouli. I personally don't get any soil, carrot or artificial notes that I see some others in the reviews talking about, to me it's just the greenery. It's like you're surrounded by tomato plants but you also just finished peeling a tangerine, and there's a breeze??? The breeze is the smell of the flower field nearby. Usually a lot of perfumes end up having a weird "spicy" smell on my skin but Maison Margiela never fails me. This is a perfect spring and summer fragrance, I could literally wear this to bed and dream about beautiful sunny days in my mom's garden.

It's lovely. Just lovely. My summers are filled with enormous tomato plants, potted geraniums stacked up each step of my staircase and fresh laundry drying on the line. This is exactly what this fragrance smells like. I have seen some say they do not get tomato from it but it's there and its bold. It smells less like tomatoes and more like your hands after pruning tomato vines and digging in the dirt underneath. It smells like geraniums giving off that sunny, citrus-y smell that they do mid-July. It smells like fresh laundry drying in the sunshine. All of this bundled up in a bold but soft scent. I feel it leans very feminine but I can see why some men might want to wear it as well. Longevity isn't that great but for such an extremely particular scent that will appeal enormously to certain people... it's worth it.

🪲 This is currently my favourite perfume! I adore the scent, and I love smelling like a citrussy, freshly watered garden! Its perfect for a hot summer day when you want to smell fresh and inviting, but floral scents are too cloying. The perfect scent to feel like a little bug! 🪲 This perfume seems incredibly versatile to me! I feel like it could easily be layered with an earthy scent, petrichor, vegetal scents, maybe even a berry or fruity scent! I'm curious to layer it with a gourmand and/or a tea fragrance to see if I can invoke the feeling of a garden picnic :) 🪲 I wish there was a bit more sillage, since I feel like it dries down to be rather intimate on my skin, and tends to weaken over an hour or two. This might just be a problem with my bottle however, since I did pick it up for rather cheap.

Whenever I come back to smell Replica, I always gravitate towards this one. I’m not even sure if I would wear this one or buy it myself. Maybe. I wouldn’t even say it’s an entirely photo realistic tomato smell, but it gets the vibe across so well, at least to my nose which is untrained in tomato leaf scents (Maybe this will change thanks to this perfume), that I am strangely addicted. It’s like tomato that hasn’t been cut open. Soil after a rainstorm.. I find it way more interesting than standard florals. and I’m not a fan of vegetable perfumes. Oddly addictive... I keep coming back to this one like a snake to a snake charmer. But it could never fit my aesthetic. What a painful experience to be so drawn to a scent that’s nothing like me.

Unexpected and beautiful! I was hoping it wasn't going to be too floral or too green based on the name. From the Garden is the perfect balance of herbaceous + citrus zest, with crispy, peppery, vegetal geranium (which reads also like a wet, stemmy, red rosebush to me), plus a "clean", leafy, lush, freshly-watered bushy patchouli note. It also honestly kinda reminds me of cutting into red bell peppers, too; especially in the beginning. At first it's almost headache inducing it's so strong. But that strength lasts only 1-2 hours, tops. The full drydown is very, very close to the skin but lasts up to 8 hours. Applying to clothing will likely fix that minor issue. It really is a pretty perfume for warm, or hot, dry weather.

I brought this perfume to my recent summer vacation in Lisbon and it was a PERFECT choice. On me, this perfume is super tomato-y and green, and the geranium is also very prominent. It is fresh and juicy and sweet in a lush way. I'm not sure if maybe I’m mistaking an existing note for it, but I get a smell of a little bit of white wine along with the listed notes. I don't smell any mandarin, more of an abstract zesty brightness. This could honestly be a going-out fragrance with how punchy and juicy it is, but I think this is best suited for dinner parties or evening drinks since it is also sophisticated in my opinion. It has normal sillage and longevity, but it's so beautiful that I think it's worth the price.

The tomato scent is incredibly nostalgic, summery, spicy and green and a spot on replica. This smells like tomato vines, leaves, greenery and sun. I am so tomato-coded when I wear this, I'm in my compost era, giving Italian summer. Honestly I love how this scent is so committed to replicating that experience for the wearer over trying to smell sexy or sophisticated for other people. The only addendum is that after a while, the tomato-ness fades and leaves a slightly sweet, LEAF smell that could be mistaken for weed. It doesn't actually smell like weed, (which I HATE the smell of, and I love this) but like most of the time if you smell a person in the city smelling this much of plants, it's weed

This is an absolutely GORGEOUS perfume. It smells like summer in Sicily! In fact, it is what I imagine Apollonia in the Godfather smelled of. Luscious tomato leaf with decadent notes of patchouli. A little hint of musk, but still perfectly balanced - floral but not too sweet, with savoury notes. I was mesmerised from the first sniff and bought it on the very spot, I am completely obsessed with it. As it develops you get complex notes of pineapple, vanilla, hazelnuts, pears it's like a delicious Sauterne! I am so surprised by the negative reviews - to describe it as 'wet vegetable patch' and 'muddy' is absurd. I do see the similarity with Olaplex Number 8, but certainly not in a bad way!

Wore this to an early spring wedding for fun, I was getting ready with the bridal party and a bridesmaid asked me what I was spraying. I let her smell it and I could tell she HATED it. I asked to sample what she was wearing, I don't remember the name but it smelled sickeningly sweet. Made total sense. The best man taught me how to two step, a young truck driver from Texas. I'd like to think the perfume made him think of green pastures and brought him over to start a conversation with me. This scent is definitely not for everyone, but perfect for someone who loves reminiscing. I feel like this works best on a clear summer day.

I would have never ever in a million years picked up a bottle of this to take a sniff as smelling like savory, earthy gardens is not my MO, however, I received a sample with purchase and I am stunned at how much I love this! The opening is herbaceous, very green tomato leaf and an actual earth/dirt smell in the background but that fades quickly into a sweet scent, a mellow sunny floral with a dry citrus underneath. I don’t get any patchouli on my skin. I wouldn’t call it spicy but there is almost a soft fuzzy feeling to it. It smells much more earthy and less sweet on paper than on my skin. Wow what an unexpected delight.

nostalgia wrapped up in a scent, especially if you grew up in the country side. my grandmother adored geranium and it’s a very dear note to me in any parfume, but mixed with tomato leaf it perfectly embodies my weekends at grandma’s in the countryside. it’s very photorealistic, i can practically feel myself in the garden, the sun hitting my face as i’m running through it, picking tomato leaves as i go, the air crisp and filled with the smell of dirt. also, i do get some (clean) dirt notes, even though it’s not listed. such a masterpiece and very niche, not a fragrance for everyone or everyday.

I'm back with a follow up after owning this for a year. My initial review was not kind - I was really disappointed with this and went a year without ever wearing it again. Tried it again a month or so ago and oh man - completely different fragrance. It's a photorealistic scent of picking tomatoes in the garden. Oh my god, I'm obsessed. And the sillage and longevity improved as well. So I guess it just needed to macerate a bit? I currently have the travel size but I will absolutely be buying a full bottle of this.

This fragrance is super unique & transforms over time! Upon first spray there is this clean fruitiness that is vibrant and uplifts the mood. I truly enjoy wearing this first thing in the morning for this reason. As it wears the vegetal greenness starts to peek through and it’s funny bcuz it can give an unlit cigarette smell at times which literally makes you search around your space like where the heck is that coming from?!?!?! LOL Overall I enjoy this fragrance and will reach for it when the mood hits me.

I really want a tomato fragrance. This one is quite nice. I get tomato, citrus, and floral. Tomato comes first and dries down to floral. I wish it was less floral and more tomato-y during the dry-down. It smells really pretty and fresh, sometimes soapy when I get a whiff of it. I want to try other tomato fragrances to compare, and also give this a go in some warm weather. I think it will really shine in the summer. Edit: Layered with Xyrena -Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.... perfection.

The first time i smelt this absolute beauty was in John Lewis. I was browsing the Replica collection and this was unexpectedly the winner for me. Layering this with another fruity perfume? wooooo!! takes it to another level. However everyone that i introduce this perfume to dislikes it. so if you are curious about this perfume test it first before blind buying an expensive big bottle. I 100% recommend wearing it on its own or layering it with a fruity scent to elevate it.

I love you I love you I love you. not kidding, this fragrance changed the game for me. I love wearing it before going for a drive. windows down, AC off, hair loose. it’s bright, green, wet, spicy, floral, fuzzy, and sweet all at once. as if Mother Nature is kissing me on my neck and feeding me bites of tomato. if this were to be discontinued I think a part of me would die. bury me in the dirt with a bottle of From the Garden, and have a picnic by my grave.