Scents and Sensibility in a Victorian Garden

Join perfumer Shelley Lewis to learn how perfume is made, the difference between natural and synthetic perfume, and why smell is so important to our personal and collective memories. The language of flowers for Victorians was particularly important given the social norms of the day. Flowers sent messages in more ways than one.  Connect with Alice’s flowers, where scent comes from, and why we find it so alluring.

Part of the sensory experience of the exhibition is a bespoke perfume created by natural perfumer Shelley Lewis, inspired by Alice’s florilegium. This ambient fragrance was born from the plants that may have been grown by Alice at Roselyn in the late 1880s – flowers from the cutting garden, herbs from the kitchen garden, the orchard, the Eucalypt woodland, and beyond. It has the rose at its heart.

“The scent is purely natural and references the end of an era; a time when the advent of synthetic molecules would signal a shift to ‘modern’ perfumery. Supporting olfactory notes have been chosen from the Victorian perfumer’s palette of botanical materials.”

~ Shelley Lewis, natural perfumer at L’Horta