The Hidden Garden: How Nature Inspired Perfume Reconnects Us to Childhood 114

👋 Hi fragrance friend,

I didn't grow up surrounded by wilderness. I was, however, blessed with a partial view of the Pacific Ocean from the living room of our apartment. The ocean was close, yet unreachable by foot, as the city rested on a cliffside. Nature around me was present, but tucked away, almost hidden.

In the building where I grew up, there was a quiet garden most people ignored. There were no swings or benches designed for play. But it was alive: shaded corners, damp soil, a lush fig tree, fragrant flowers, leaves that held the day's warmth, plants full of aliveness.

That garden became my refuge.

I spent time there alone and with friends, touching leaves, crushing herbs between my fingers, playing with insects, noticing how the air changed depending on the hour. I didn't think of it as nature then. It was simply a place where things grew with a rhythm of their own, where scent existed before language.

I believe that's where my relationship with fragrance began. 

Perfume, for me, has always been a return to nature, to that hidden, half-forgotten garden of childhood. Certain notes (resin, moss, bark, florals, earth) bring me back to that safe garden space. It's a memory steeped in nostalgia, rooted in the fertile ground of imagination. 

Naturally, I'm drawn to fragrances inspired by nature. These creations remind me I'm not trying to escape where I am, but to reconnect more deeply with it—with stillness, with texture, with the wonders of God's creation, this physical world we inhabit.

This is why the fragrances I'm drawn to feel alive on my skin, integrated into my experience of life.

Perfume can do many things. It can beckon, transform, elevate. But its quiet power is this: it can bring us back to what we once knew instinctively—how to notice, how to connect, how to be in the world without rushing past it.

For me, that return always looks like a garden. Hidden. Green. Alive.

With kindness,
🕊 Flor at Nectar Atelier

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