From Plant to Palm
Our love of scent sparked the foundations of Forest Skincare. Of our days spent at the flower farm and in our workshops; from the moment a stem is cut or a root is lifted in the field, it’s the smell that you notice first. It tells you what something is and where it came from. Over the years we’ve always been drawn to products that hold a unique smell, be it a candle or a perfume that held a beautiful scent, inviting us to indulge in the depth of fragrance.
For us, scent is often tied closely to a sense of place. Smell-triggered memories tend to feel more vivid and more emotionally charged than memories triggered by a photo or a sound, and they often reach further back, sometimes to early childhood. When you smell something, the signal goes almost straight to the part of the brain that handles emotion and memory before it ever reaches the areas responsible for conscious, analytical thought.
Because smell is so contextual – tied to specific rooms, seasons, materials – it's one of the fastest ways to relive comforting memories. A smell can put you back in a kitchen, a workshop, a moment of nostalgia, almost instantly and with very little conscious effort.
When we came to develop the Forest Skincare range, we wanted the scents to lead, bringing to the forefront aromatic scent that took us back to a special time and place. Coming from somewhere real and remembered.
After researching individual properties of each botanical, we landed on two scents: Rooted and Workshop. Here is the origin of each one.
Rooted
Vetiver | Sandalwood | Patchouli | Neroli
There is a particular quality in the forest air just after rain has fallen. A comforting aroma of damp earth. We chose vetiver root as the leading scent, it’s a complex and multifaceted scent primarily grounded in earthy, smoky, woody aromas.
We paired it with patchouli, which also has a quality of depth reminiscent of damp soil except it holds a subtle sweetness at the end. Patchouli comes from a plant in the mint family, though you would not know it from the smell alone. It is earthy and grounding and we kept returning to these words as we developed the scent profile, reminding ourselves that Rooted is reminiscent of vines planted in a greenhouse. Rooted would be healing.
Sandalwood came next, as a soft connector, bringing warm and slightly spicy notes. And then neroli, lifted from the blossom of the bitter orange tree, which adds a floral freshness and opens up the sensory experience.
Workshop
Balsam fir | Galbanum | Rhododendron
When we're working at the studios in London, the smell that defines a floristry workspace is one of a kind. You would expect a florist’s studio to smell overwhelmingly floral, but instead you’re met with a scent of cut stems and stripped leaves. Specifically at the moment of cutting, there’s a sharp, green release that happens in the split second a stem is opened. It is brief but uplifting and something we felt entirely unique to this kind of space.
Galbanum is the ingredient that holds that note. Belonging to the same family as wild carrot, it is a resin extracted from a grass native to Iran and the smell is arrestingly green and herbaceous. Containing some of the most useful actives in terms of cellular repair, Galbanum has a long history of use in supporting skin regeneration. Workshop would be rejuvenating.
Balsam fir came next, bringing the coniferous forest to the scent profile. It is clean and crisp, and it gives the scent a structural quality that keeps everything feeling purposeful and invigorating. We chose rhododendron for the base, as a slightly sweet floral note. Rhododendron wood too, which yields something spiced and resinous, and grounds the scent without dulling it.
Two harmonious scents
Two scents, formulated to heal and regenerate. Both can work alone, or complimentary to one another. The sensory experience is built around trusting what the senses tell you, creating moments in the day to indulge in grounding, natural scents that allow us to take a little escape from our day-to-day.
From plant to palm
