Parterre Gardens Amboise

As many perfume lovers can attest, there is value and joy to be found in exploring an entire collection of scents from a fragrance house. It helps give the end consumer a more complete picture of a brand’s concept, a collection’s cohesiveness and/or an individual perfumer’s style and artistry. I find it especially helpful when a brand is new (or just new to me). A discovery set helps minimize the possibility of blind buyer’s remorse (very important with solid fragrances, as they’re not so easy to swap away or sell if you get one you don’t like). They’re also useful for keeping one’s nose busy during slow-buy/no-buy periods, offering plenty to explore for a reasonable cost. I am always excited when I encounter a discovery set of solid perfumes and I hope this is a practice that will expand amongst the indie and artisan solid perfumer community.

So if you read my overview of The French Garden Collection Discovery Set and the two limited editions from Parterre Gardens, you may recall that as of the time of publication, I was still exploring the samples in my Discovery Set, narrowing down my choices for a full-size purchase. I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t choose differently if I were buying in winter instead of summer, or after giving all the samples a few more wears, but when I was ready to pull the trigger, I went with a full size of Amboise.

It’s different from any other scents in my current collection. It’s unisex. It’s seasonless. It’s a beautiful, complex, evolving fragrance that reveals different facets every time I wear it. Those qualities are not requirements for a full-size purchase, but they were certainly marks in this one’s favor.

Also nice: my purchase of the Discovery Set came with a discount coupon for 10% off any purchase of a full-size fragrance.

The full-size solid perfumes are tastefully packaged in the brand’s distinctive box and labeling. My Amboise is housed in a durable glass jar that easily accommodates a couple of fingers for easy swiping and will be a nice size to re-use when it’s finished. The full-size fragrances also include a beautiful bonus ingredient not found in the samples: flower petals from the Parterre Gardens fields. I’m not certain the dried petals enhance the scent all that much, but they make the visual and tactile experience of using the solid fragrance more pleasurable. They’re a nice finishing touch.

I’m happy with my choice of Amboise and I look forward to future releases from this botanical perfume house. If you’d like to explore these fragrances, please visit the Parterre Gardens website to order individual samples or the Discovery Set. Follow them on Instagram for lovely perfume and flower images, as well as photos from founder/perfumer Jacob Van Patten’s visits to the gardens of France that inspired the perfume collection.

All images by me.