LIMITED EDITION: Panagia's Garden Quartet
Panagia’s Garden
A Fragrance Quartet in Bloom
A collaboration between Phronema Perfumes, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum
Created in dialogue with the living flora of the Garden, these four fragrances are botanical meditations: olfactory compositions that interpret, not replicate, the smells encountered along the garden’s winding paths — its greenhouses, hedgerows, flower beds, and wild-growing groves.
Panagia’s Garden: Gardenia
There is something hushed about the first breath of this fragrance. It opens not with grandeur, but with the grace of light spilling through leaves — Tonka Bean, Mandarin, and Honey Dew mingling with the sweetness of Lavender and the bright lift of Orange. A soft lemonade haze hangs in the air.
Then: Gardenia. Opulent but pure, creamy and soft as first light on petals. This is not the heady white bloom of sultry perfumes, but a gardenia made sacred by morning dew. Gently, it yields to violet shadows — Grape, Violet, Lychee — a watercolor wash of purple-fruit tones blooming around the floral heart.
As the sun arcs higher, Hay, Orris Butter, and Mysore Sandalwood begin to settle in — evoking shaded benches, warm skin, and library air. A final whisper of Black Tea passes through, grounding the floral expanse in a note of contemplative dryness.
Panagia’s Garden: Gardenia is a luminous floral-chypre impression — tender, radiant, and wholly serene.
Panagia’s Garden: Tuberose
Where Gardenia offered stillness, Tuberose offers movement — an unfolding, a hymn. A lush white floral heart pulses from the opening, with Tuberose Absolute, Ylang Ylang, and Jasmine Grandiflorum braided into an intoxicating green-white garland.
This is a floral canon in motion — one in which Eucalyptus lends lift and breath, Petitgrain Bigarade and Galbanum inject bitter-sweet verdancy, and Green Cognac and Cubeb provide cool, wine-like sharpness.
Through it all, the resin-sweet warmth of Orange Blossom Absolute sings a quiet refrain, floating atop a base of Pink Peppercorn, White Ambergris, and citrus zest. The drydown is soft but radiant — the breath after the hymn, not the echo.
Panagia’s Garden: Tuberose is a modern temple floral — expansive, radiant, and deeply alive.
Panagia’s Garden: Cubanola
Where the earlier compositions moved through bloom and light, Cubanola brings us to the underworld of scent.
Named after the unusual trumpet-shaped plant native to Cuba and Haiti (Cubanola domingensis), it opens with Orange and Oregano, bright and herbal, but quickly descends into Vetiver, Patchouli, and Coffee — earthy, slightly bitter, and utterly grounding. This is the aroma of sun-heated flower, strangely full of green chocolatey goodness, of crushed leaves and herbal tinctures prepared in hidden corners.
The perfume also immediately sweetens — Caramel, Vanilla Absolute, and Heliotrope rise with unexpected softness, like a warm breeze carrying bakery sweetness through the foliage. Anchored by Grey Ambergris and Mysore Sandalwood, the composition achieves a textured harmony between shadow and warmth.
This is the scent of herbal lore, of sun-dappled archives and stone chapels hidden in groves. A sweet earthy-green hymn.
Panagia’s Garden: Boabaab
While the Cubanola leans toward earth, its companion is a celebration of sun-sweetened fruit, heady floral bursts, and warm skin. This is a garden at its most riotous — abundant and sensorial.
It opens with a striking freshness: Galbanum, Davana Absolute, and Ambrette Seed forming a green and gently musky prelude. Then come the fruits — Banana, Pineapple — not candied or synthetic, but naturalistic, like orchard air mixed with human warmth.
The floral heart is soft and expressive: Ylang Ylang, Jasmine Grandiflorum, and Hyacinth, giving the perfume its flesh and curve. The subtle note of Deer Musk is used with extraordinary restraint — lending a lift and sensual resonance without overt animality.
Cabreuva Bark, with its rosewood-like sweetness, rounds the fragrance into a soft, skin-toned glow — like warm light settling on ripe fruit.
This is the dream of the garden, not its architecture. A scent of joy, radiance, and repose.
Panagia’s Garden
A Fragrance Quartet in Bloom
A collaboration between Phronema Perfumes, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum
Created in dialogue with the living flora of the Garden, these four fragrances are botanical meditations: olfactory compositions that interpret, not replicate, the smells encountered along the garden’s winding paths — its greenhouses, hedgerows, flower beds, and wild-growing groves.
Panagia’s Garden: Gardenia
There is something hushed about the first breath of this fragrance. It opens not with grandeur, but with the grace of light spilling through leaves — Tonka Bean, Mandarin, and Honey Dew mingling with the sweetness of Lavender and the bright lift of Orange. A soft lemonade haze hangs in the air.
Then: Gardenia. Opulent but pure, creamy and soft as first light on petals. This is not the heady white bloom of sultry perfumes, but a gardenia made sacred by morning dew. Gently, it yields to violet shadows — Grape, Violet, Lychee — a watercolor wash of purple-fruit tones blooming around the floral heart.
As the sun arcs higher, Hay, Orris Butter, and Mysore Sandalwood begin to settle in — evoking shaded benches, warm skin, and library air. A final whisper of Black Tea passes through, grounding the floral expanse in a note of contemplative dryness.
Panagia’s Garden: Gardenia is a luminous floral-chypre impression — tender, radiant, and wholly serene.
Panagia’s Garden: Tuberose
Where Gardenia offered stillness, Tuberose offers movement — an unfolding, a hymn. A lush white floral heart pulses from the opening, with Tuberose Absolute, Ylang Ylang, and Jasmine Grandiflorum braided into an intoxicating green-white garland.
This is a floral canon in motion — one in which Eucalyptus lends lift and breath, Petitgrain Bigarade and Galbanum inject bitter-sweet verdancy, and Green Cognac and Cubeb provide cool, wine-like sharpness.
Through it all, the resin-sweet warmth of Orange Blossom Absolute sings a quiet refrain, floating atop a base of Pink Peppercorn, White Ambergris, and citrus zest. The drydown is soft but radiant — the breath after the hymn, not the echo.
Panagia’s Garden: Tuberose is a modern temple floral — expansive, radiant, and deeply alive.
Panagia’s Garden: Cubanola
Where the earlier compositions moved through bloom and light, Cubanola brings us to the underworld of scent.
Named after the unusual trumpet-shaped plant native to Cuba and Haiti (Cubanola domingensis), it opens with Orange and Oregano, bright and herbal, but quickly descends into Vetiver, Patchouli, and Coffee — earthy, slightly bitter, and utterly grounding. This is the aroma of sun-heated flower, strangely full of green chocolatey goodness, of crushed leaves and herbal tinctures prepared in hidden corners.
The perfume also immediately sweetens — Caramel, Vanilla Absolute, and Heliotrope rise with unexpected softness, like a warm breeze carrying bakery sweetness through the foliage. Anchored by Grey Ambergris and Mysore Sandalwood, the composition achieves a textured harmony between shadow and warmth.
This is the scent of herbal lore, of sun-dappled archives and stone chapels hidden in groves. A sweet earthy-green hymn.
Panagia’s Garden: Boabaab
While the Cubanola leans toward earth, its companion is a celebration of sun-sweetened fruit, heady floral bursts, and warm skin. This is a garden at its most riotous — abundant and sensorial.
It opens with a striking freshness: Galbanum, Davana Absolute, and Ambrette Seed forming a green and gently musky prelude. Then come the fruits — Banana, Pineapple — not candied or synthetic, but naturalistic, like orchard air mixed with human warmth.
The floral heart is soft and expressive: Ylang Ylang, Jasmine Grandiflorum, and Hyacinth, giving the perfume its flesh and curve. The subtle note of Deer Musk is used with extraordinary restraint — lending a lift and sensual resonance without overt animality.
Cabreuva Bark, with its rosewood-like sweetness, rounds the fragrance into a soft, skin-toned glow — like warm light settling on ripe fruit.
This is the dream of the garden, not its architecture. A scent of joy, radiance, and repose.