It was a few days before Easter when I arrived in Ukraine in 2014 to stay with my grandmother, Valentina. Taking advantage of being together for the first time in years for this holiday, we prepared a large feast, colored eggs with onion peels and baked paska, a brioche-like Easter bread.  I became obsessed with photographing every part of our preparations, making my grandmother laugh. She didn’t understand what was interesting about recording everything. I didn’t understand it myself at the time, but I felt that I had to capture as many of my impressions as possible. Ukraine was going through a painful period as Russia had annexed Crimea and was also supporting various separatist movements in the eastern part of the country. We lived with the sounds of gunfire from the military training grounds nearby and with bitter news from the front.

Yet, as we celebrated Easter with its powerful message of renewal and rebirth, we felt hopeful. We planted vegetables and flowers in the garden. We whitewashed our cherry trees. We waited for the blossoms to burst.

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Stepping inside the Princess of Wales Conservatory during Kew Gardens’ annual orchid festival—it usually runs from February to March—is a chance to discover how beautiful the fragrance of these opulent tropical flowers can be. While the most popular orchids sold by florists are unscented, there are also many perfumed varieties, with their aromas spanning the full olfactory spectrum from effervescent lemon to dark chocolate.

One such scented orchid is vanilla planifolia. Perhaps it’s not surprising, since this plant produces one of the world’s most fragrant spices. The flowers have a delicious aroma reminiscent of creamy jasmine and green grape. Although more subtle than the scent of vanilla pods, it has inspired perfumers to create fragrances around vanilla flowers relying on the recent studies of orchids and their aromas.

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I started this morning with a stroll through a bluebell forest, continued to a Japanese peony orchard, and got lost in an Italian garden before falling asleep in a cypress grove somewhere in Greece. I never left my room. I only changed home fragrances.  Perfumes uplift our mood, satisfy wanderlust and inspire daydreams, and selecting the right scents for the interior achieves the same effect.

Floris’s Hyacinth & Bluebell Room Fragrance is inspired by its iconic Bluebell fragrance, with a stronger emphasis on green, earthy notes.  It lingers gently and makes the space feel brighter and fresher. If I close my eyes, I can envision the vivid blue of wild hyacinths and the rustle of trees in their springtime verdancy.

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‘A paean to hope and home, written with such gentleness and deep adherence to emotional truth that to me its words become a fierceness to cast against harm, hardship and hurt. I loved it and it will haunt me for a long time.’ Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk

‘[A] poignant, gently unfolding . . . elegant family narrative of myriad characters traumatized by the deep-seated Russia-Ukrainian struggle. . . Throughout this powerful text, readers will encounter numerous satisfying layers.’ Kirkus Review

‘The familiar village symbol of a rooster on the roof hides a dark secret in Victora Belim’s marvellously vivid and often heartbreaking account of a personal quest, one that leads us deep into the complexities that lie behind news headlines while introducing us to an unforgettable group of characters. I read it in a single enthralled sitting.’ Miranda Seymour, author of I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys

‘Wild Swans for Ukraine … rich and magnificent.’ Bookseller

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