There are pros and cons to working on the same floor as the Canadian Living magazine’s Test Kitchen. Although it means the Style At Home crew are often well-fed — they kindly let us indulge when sampling new recipes (Or maybe we’re their guinea pigs… Haven’t worked that out yet…) — it also means that the aromas of their latest concoctions inevitably waft through our office. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but sometimes you just don’t want to be engulfed in a cloud of garlic and onions at 8:30 in the morning.
Instead of kicking up a stink (sorry, couldn’t resist), I used the opportunity to test out a few home fragrance samples that just came by my desk. Dans Un Jardin is a Boucherville, Quebec-based company, originally founded in Paris in 1976, that specializes in the art of parfumerie for bath, body and home. A few hits of Dans Un Jardin’s “Buds & Leaves” home fragrance mist, and those cooking smells are replaced by the ambiance of an English garden: very clean, fresh notes of sun-ripening tomatoes, lemon zest, greenery and musk. Delightfully fresh, and surprisingly gentle — a number of my colleagues are extremely sensitive to smell, and they all commented on the subtlety of this spray. Love it!
7.5 oz Buds & Leaves home fragrance spray
Price: $6
To order online or find the closest retailer: Dans Un Jardin, Boucherville, Que., 450-449-2121
The holidays are a time to indulge all of the senses, and perhaps the keenest of our senses is that of smell. I had the pleasure of interviewing home fragrance designer Harry Slatkin of New York-based parfumerie powerhouse 
