It's amazing how much a certain scent can bring back memories or instill a feeling of calm and the Duchess of Edinburgh has just shared one of the aromas that she loves the most. This year Sophie is co-designing a garden for the Royal Windsor Flower Show and told RWFS Honorary President Alan Titchmarsh that the Plants With Purpose garden will include vegetables, fruits and herbs.
"There's nothing better than going out and picking some rosemary; it's one of the best smells in the garden," Duchess Sophie explained in a piece shared with The Telegraph. "The dogs run through it and then they come back and you can even smell it on the dogs."
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Our Digital Beauty Writer Naomi Jamieson loves this fragrance and recommends Diptique Orphéon as an all-year-round scent. It's a unisex perfume which blends soft notes of powdery jasmine and warm tobacco, with hints of cedarwood and tonka bean for a woody depth and a subtly musky trail.
The Duchess of Sussex has spoken in the past about loving this Jo Malone scent and it's an absolute classic. First launched in 2014, it's fresh and vibrant, with a top note of ambrette seeds, a middle note of sea salt and an earthy base of sage.
This luxurious fragrance has key notes of mint, fir balsam and cypress so it's no wonder it smells woody and herbal. This is one of Naomi's favourite perfumes of 2025 and she described it as very green and unique. She's "come to really appreciate the boldness of it", so if you're looking for something a little different, this could be it.
This refreshing cologne features notes of grapefruit - as the name suggests - alongside earthy moss and herbal rosemary for an invigorating finish. There are also accents of mint, lavender and camphor to add some aromatic clarity.
This long-lasting perfume is inspired by Greek fig groves and has a woody scent with top notes of fig leaf, middle notes of coconut and base notes of cedar. There's a definite Mediterranean feel with the aromas of fig tree bark, green leaves, blossoms and figs and this is a great pick for summer.
The From the Garden Eau de Toilette conjures up the image of a sun-soaked garden and features the fresh notes of tomato leaf and green mandarin. There's also patchouli and geranium to underpin these and you can get it in the smaller 30ml size or the 100ml bottle.
She and Prince Edward have three dogs and plenty of outdoor space where they live at Bagshot Park to grow herbs like rosemary. It's got such a distinctive, woody scent and of all the smells I could've imagined Sophie loving, this never came to mind.
The way she talks about it suggests it really is one of her favourites and perhaps this means that she gravitates towards fresh, more herbal perfumes. Unlike the Royal Family's clothing and jewellery which is often instantly recognisable, their signature fragrances are mostly a mystery.
Over the years it's been widely reported that the Duchess of Edinburgh wore Ralph Lauren Romance on her wedding day. This is more floral than herbal, though it does have woody base notes and is often considered a fresh, airy scent.
Even if her favourite perfume is very different to the rosemary she loves to smell in the garden, it's still an interesting titbit from Sophie and I can just imagine her dogs running through the plants and her enjoying the aroma at her Surrey home. Her Plants With Purpose garden features other aspects that are personal to her too.
The Duchess told Alan about growing up in Kent and having fruit trees at home, leading to her ensuring there's an abundance of fruit and trees in her garden.
"What people will see is that you can mix the planting of prettiness with things that are going to end up in the kitchen and become food," the Duchess said. "We've got a variety of fruit trees at home, so we will have some small fruit trees here as well. As a child, I grew up around fruit gardens in Kent, and in my teens I'd go off cycling to the local farm to go and pick raspberries day after day."
She added they had an old orchard in the garden that produced the "most delicious apples" which were tiny. Sophie reminisced, "And to be able to just take an apple off a tree, or pick a gooseberry… As a child, how many times did you pick a gooseberry straight off the bush and eat it?"
Plants With Purpose is being created to be both visually beautiful and useful, either in providing homes for pollinators or ingredients you can cook. There are plenty of recipes that include rosemary and given Duchess Sophie's whole ethos with the garden, I expect she makes full use of this herb in her meals as well as appreciating it as one of the "best smells" around.
