Un Jardin sur le Nil (French for "A Garden on the Nile") is a 2005 perfume created by perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena for Hermès. A unisex eau de toilette, the scent was inspired by the green mangoes Ellena smelled while walking through a grove of mangoes during a visit to the Nile.
With Sarah Jessica Parker's perfume Lovely, Jardin sur le Nil was one of two scents whose development Chandler Burr chronicled in his book The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris & New York (2008). This period marked a turning point for Hermès and the perfume industry more generally as the "noses" behind scents gained prominence beyond industry insiders: Hermès named Ellena its first in-house perfumer, responsible for Jardin sur le Nil and all subsequent Hermès fragrance releases during his 12-year tenure.
Background
Jean-Claude Ellena began the Hermès "Jardin" series of fragrances in 2003 when his brief was selected from a call for proposals on the theme of the Mediterranean Sea.[1] This resulted in the fragrance Un Jardin en Méditerranée, commissioned through Ellena's employer at the time, German fragrance firm Symrise.[1]