Victorian Garden

[alioth]

Summer honey infused with medicinal herbs and gently cloaked by French lavender.

Moving my review to where it belongs!

I'm wearing Victorian Garden today after it's had a little time to rest (the mailman had left my package sitting out in the sun, sob), and it is mostly cool green herbyness on me today, with some grounding honey and a little dried lavender. I wouldn't call this...perfumey, per se, but it does have some sort of element of a natural bath product at the moment, like a bath salt or a scrub made with herbs and honey as opposed to a soap. Either way, it's light and organic-smelling and very nice for this hot weather.

After 4+ hours, the end drydown reminded me of that b&bw aromatherapy calming scent, the mint and eucalyptus one that doesn't reeeeally smell like either because it's so sweet. Very light, sweet, watery herbs. I want to let this one age to see if the honey and lavender come out more. Right now it's nice, but it's not special enough that I envision myself reaching for it often.

[Schmoozy]

This is so beautiful, I only wished I had grabbed more than one bottle of it. Victorian Garden is predominantly lavender honey with a smattering of fresh cut herbs. I find honey and lavender to be very medicinal in smell, and this is no exception. They amplify the herbs ten fold. It is fresh, crisp, and a slight sweetness escapes every once in awhile cutting the herbal vibe and just enhancing the greeness. I adore this so much. If you love medicinal herbs, lavender and honey this scent is for you. Stunning.

[angelicruin]

I ended up selling my bottle, but did jot down my impressions. Soft lavender sweetened with honey and balanced with herbs. I would have kept it but decided I really do have enough lavender scents to last me quite some time.

[Lorelai1945]

Where's the honey?? This was very herbal/floral on me- medicinal lavender and lots of herbs. It wasn't unpleasant, but it also wasn't something I'd wear regularly either. I didn't get any honey or sweetness like I was hoping for. I knew that French lavender would be a lot stronger than other lavenders I have, but I also hoped the honey would help soften it more. I thought about keeping my bottle around for aromatherapy purposes, but I have TKO and some TALs for that, so I sold it to a loving home.

[AnArtfuldodger]

In the decant: HONEY!

 

On my wrist: Honey, which then softens to floral -- gardenia? Gardenia and honey, very soft and feminine.

 

Drydown: This didn't really work for me -- a lot of florals tend to smell the same to me, so it's sort of just standard floral with a hint of honey....if you like honey and florals, I say go for it! I was hoping it'd be a little more herbal and sweet than floral and sweet, but hey, at least now I know! I'll try to rehome the wee decant fellow. (I'm really bad at picking out florals so my gardenia reference could be totally, totally just me!)

[lamenteuse]

The only other honey scent I have to compare this to is Mead Moon, which smells wonderful, but not truly "honey" on my skin.

This had none of the notes of Mead Moon to my nose. It was herbal and green at first sniff, then herbal and lavender (in the retail thread, I likened it to the scent of my guinea pig when he ran through the garden).

It does get a little sweeter after that, but I'm not so sure on buying a bottle. If I want a Mutter scent (which I do, because I love that museum), I'm stick with Ü.

[childoftime]

I'm not the best at picking out notes, but here goes!

 

In the bottle: I don't really smell honey here, just freshly cut/crushed greenery, dripping with plant juices. I'm pretty sure eucalyptus is a player here.

 

Wet on my arm: Plant juice! Ooh, and just a hint of dirt. I'm still not getting much honey. This is the smell of someone's hands after they've been working in the garden, doing the pruning.

 

Drydown: The medicinal smell that was so prominent at first seems to be fading and the honey is really coming out to play. This is warming up into something gorgeous! Still very green and herbal, but now warm and sweet. This is turning into something I'd actually want to smell like instead of being such an aggressive herbal.

 

Dry: Warm lavender honey with just a hint of herb in the background. Beautiful.

[ellebelle]

Wet: LAVENDER. Nothing else, just a blast of lavender.

 

Dry down: Thankfully the prominent lavender smell fades quickly into the background. The herbs begin to come out and it starts to smell like soap.

 

Far dry down: The honey scent finally makes an appearance in the far dry down. Most BPAL blends with honey in them dry down to this beautiful honey musky smell and this is no exception. Except the herbal scent also stays prominent and the result is an odd honey-soap smell. It is weird, a little unpleasant, and for me evocative of my grandmothers underwear draw.

 

Pass.

[Ethaisa]

I'm a lavender fan, and this is gorgeous. It starts out all lavender sweetened with honey and then mellows into a lovely cloud of herbal powder. Some scents that powder on me go rather soapy, and I'm not at all fond of that, but thankfully this doesn't. The honey actually gets stronger at this point, and a little spicy-musky. A lazy afternoon walk through a sun-warmed herb garden, with bees dancing amidst the tiny blooms.

[Blood onmy hands]

Victorian Garden is herbal lavender (not the milky, creamy, sweeter variety that I prefer, but a more medicinal, mentholic lavender on my skin) with soapy greenery. I can't really pick out the honey, though it might be making the blend a tad sweeter in the drydown. The drydown is less green and more generic floral on my skin over time, which I'm not loving.

I think that I'll still reach for TKO when I want a lavender aromatherapy blend...

[zankoku_zen]

I definitely get the herbal honey. It has a slight lavender tinge to it. I feel like this is more of a lavender aromatherapy blend than a perfume.

[edenssixthday]

Victorian Garden - I amp lavender, dislike BPAL's lavender note, and this scent is no exception to my general dislike of lavender scents. It's mostly lavender with other herbs that smells slightly like an apothecary's tincture. I don't smell the honey at all. Pass!

[reconditarmonia]

This sounded perfect for me - I adore lavender and I adore honey - but, not so much. Lavender is always really weak on me, and this ends up smelling clean and slightly tangy rather than what I was hoping for. I'll have to give it a little time.

Edited November 14, 2010 by reconditarmonia

[milo]

Very nice, sweet lavender. When I first received this from a swap, I found it very astringent. It has toned down quite a bit, and to me, it is a less sweet TKO. I think the lavender is the same, with herbs and honey instead of sweet vanilla. I love lavender, so all is good. This will be a great bedtime blend.

[Invidiana]

This is a bit sharp and herbal in the bottle but after giving it a minute to dry down on my skin it's really the lovely honey and lavender that come forward replacing the herbal quality. It's like TKO with honey instead of vanilla, pretty and very soothing.

[lookingglass]

Very very very much lavender-purple flowers and green stems. It dries out like lavender water, a bit lighter. If there are herbs and honey, they simply mingle with the green part of the lavender to my nose. A pretty little posy. That is it.

[calivianya]

Something is going wrong here.

 

I'm not so sure that my skin chemistry agrees with honey, as I love lavender and most herbal scents. The first five minutes, I pick up some sort of funk from Victorian Garden.

 

As it dries down, the funk disappears and I smell mainly medicinal herbs and lavender. This is not a bad thing; I rather love this scent right now. I'm not picking up the honey at all - this is more of a bitter blend, but I am loving it anyway. It is also not disappearing on my skin immediately like some lavender blends tend to do. This may just be a keeper!

[eleventhousand]

i love this...it is just what i'd hoped for.

 

musky-sweet honey that doesn't get too sticky/cloying, magnolia, maybe a bit of honeysuckle and greenery...lots of greenery. it's sort of a stem-sap scent. i can't really discern the lavender from the general herbishness, so it's not a really sharp lavender. it makes me think of ivy and more succulent, watery plants...like parsley and chickweed and watercress. i don't get any mint, rosemary, or thyme (thankfully, thyme is SO strong on me) or anything on the spicy end of things.

 

sweet, green, and shady. a skin-scent for a dryad.

[KissleMeNow]

I picked up the tester of Victorian Garden at the Mütter Museum, and it was love at first sniff. Even though I wasn't planning to get it, I walked away with a bottle. The honey is dusty, subtly sweet, but doesn't overpower the herbs. I don't know enough to identify them, but there's definitely some lavender in there... It reminds me a bit of Laudanum, but not sharp at all. It's a lovely scent.

 

Unfortunately, this tale has a sad twist – about three minutes after I put it on, I had an asthma attack, and the same the second time I tried it. One of those herbs is not so medicinal, at least for me. The bottle is going to have a happy life with my mother... but if I could wear it, I definitely would. *sadface*

[Koumori]

I really wanted Ü if I'm being honest, but the museum gift shop was out of it when I visited, so I picked up a bottle of Victorian Garden instead. I was a little leery, as I have not cared for the honey notes I've tried from other e-tailers and some lavenders leap straight up my sinuses to hang out. This came very close to being one of those lavenders too sharp for my taste, but in a fortunate stroke, the honey used in this blend actually mellows out the medicinal nature of the scent enough that I feel like I can wear it on the (very rare) occasion I might decide to go for a lavender scent. It reminds me of a slightly sharper version of Arkham. Overall, the blend worked on me where it shouldn't have, but I don't see myself going for it very often.

[suki]

Although I ultimately decided that purchasing a bottle of Ü was a better thing for me, I'm really glad I got to test this whilst in the museum gift shop. I'd spent the first portion of my visit meandering through their glorious medicinal garden, and this scent does not disappoint in terms of being a wonderful keepsake of such an enchanting place! The lavender is a strong foundational note and certainly I would call that the primary scent here. but there's more- this *does* read as somewhat medicinal: it's not a cloying floral, it's complex and layered, but all the layers are of a very 'green' variety. If you want the feeling of culling herbs to make an important brew, then this is absolutely the scent for you.

Personally, I *only* use lavender in medicinal capacities, and always straight up (my only, ONLY exception is TKO and even THAT I only put on when the insomnia is threatening to destroy me )...so a scent like this is unlikely to wind up in my collection.

 

But as I said, I'm very grateful to have tried it.

[DiZZysTARdust]

I was on the fence about this right up until i purchased a bottle of it. I liked the garden theme but i'm ambivalent about lavender. So i took the plunge and bought a bottle and it was the first thing out of the package that i tried. I was initially disappointed. In the bottle this smells like straight lavender. Wet on my skin i could smell lavender but it seemed slightly greener. Othersreviewers have described how this is not necessarily the traditional "medicinal" lavender and i think that is spot on. The lavender throw stayed strong. For at least half an hour i could smell it whenever i moved. Then i randomly sniffed the dried patch on my wrist and was totally shocked to smell the most gorgeous, slightly leafy but still sweet, honey note. Omgggg, i am totally in love with this. I understand the description of cloaked in lavender perfectly, this is a soothing and not overehelming lavender at a distance and warm herbal honey close up