Can’t smell the wood for the trees? Why the scent of the season is the great outdoors.

The Japanese concept of shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing”, is becoming popular the world over. Immersing yourself in nature and stimulating the senses via your surroundings has been proven to reduce stress and improve wellbeing. And it’s not just the sounds of birdsong, the wind in the trees or the calming view that help usher in a sense of Zen. The very smell of a forest is powerfully restorative. Hardly surprising, then, that perfumers have been inspired by woodland.

Woods form the base notes of many so-called “masculine” fragrances. “The wood facet gives a composition of character and warmth,” says fragrance historian and perfumer Mr Roja Dove. “It’s also where one finds the materials that provide the excellent lingering quality that some fragrances inherently seem to have, the best example of which is sandalwood.” Other prized woody ingredients include cedar, guaiacwood, rosewood, aoud, cypress and vetiver.

As with any natural product, provenance is key. The good stuff is mainly harvested in North America, India, North Africa and Brazil. For city dwellers, the easiest way to summon the scent of the wild woodlands is with a whiff of an artfully composed fragrance that captures the essence of the great outdoors. Take a deep breath and inhale five of the most transporting woody scents and discover the forests that inspired them.

Like most creators of fragrance, Mr Ben Gorham takes a personal approach to his line, Byredo. Born to an Indian mother and French-Canadian father and raised in Sweden, Mr Gorham’s fragrances often reference his background. He has said that the starting point is often to translate his own memories into a scent. Super Cedar, named for the tree, is partly inspired by his mother’s house in Chembur, Mumbai. Haitian vetiver, silk musk and rose create a nostalgic scent that evokes log cabins and warm summer evenings spent in woods in the far Northern Hemisphere.

There’s a story behind every D.S. & Durga scent, and Freetrapper is no different. It is inspired by the pioneers of North America’s expansive wilderness and the woods and rolling prairies of the American Midwest – a vast area that is home to the Black Hills National Forest and Mount Rushmore. Mr David Moltz of the Brooklyn-based perfumery readily admits that he spends his “whole life looking for the beauty and nature that surround us always, even in the depths of the city, from gardens and parks to flowering trees and even weeds. I like looking for wild plants everywhere”. For him, “ozone, conifers, wild flowers and grass” are the notes that best express the great outdoors. His fascination has paid off. Freetrapper makes use of obscure ingredients such as snakeroot, dark cedar, synthetic beaver castor and wild bergamot. It creates an impression of head-clearing, eye-brightening, pine-scented air tinged with the spirit of adventure.

After seeing the majestic sequoia trees in California, perfumer Ms Azzi Glasser took the opportunity to create a bespoke scent for herself: Sequoia Wood. “The scent from the wood is like no other,” she says. “Sandalwood is oily and cedarwood is dry. With sequoia, the aroma is woody but sensual with a depth to it and a sexy juiciness. The atmospheric note it gives off is magnetic to the nose and never-ending to the mind.” Ms Glasser wore it for seven years before releasing it as part of her collection, The Perfumer’s Story. Recent converts include actors Mr Tom Hardy and Ms Helena Bonham Carter. “When you wear Sequoia Wood, you can sometimes feel that you are in a space that is of comfort, full of power, hedonistic, but calm and heavenly,” says Ms Glasser. “It’s from a very special place.” It is indeed, and an apt tribute to those towering redwoods in the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park.

“My parents have lived in the Vaucluse for 30 years,” says Laboratory Perfumes founder Mr Aaron Firth. “We have driven to the house on more occasions than I can remember and at the top of the hill, before descending into the valley, we would open the windows and the rush of gorse bloom would fill the car.” This hardy evergreen plant has delicately scented yellow flowers and grows wild on windswept inclines across Europe. Herbs, spices and flowers provide the main inspiration for all Laboratory Perfumes’ minimalist fragrances. With its cardamon and coconut top notes and milky, musky undertones. Gorse immediately evokes sun-baked earth, sun-warmed skin and the gentle sound of crickets – but mainly, says Mr Firth, “the beginning of a great holiday”.

“The citrus notes bring the freshness, the woods add the warmth,” says Mr Tom Daxon on the composition of his captivating scent, Sicilian Wood. “Sandalwood and cedarwood are complementary, but bring their own qualities – a milky nuttiness for sandalwood, while cedarwood is drier and crisper. Sicily was a nod to the famous lemons, but more broadly it feels Italian, as it should, given that many of the citrus oils are sourced from Calabria. It’s classical and unfussy and draws its sophistication from the quality of its ingredients, which is exactly what I admire about Italian sensibilities.” Sicilian Wood perfectly captures what he calls the “late-afternoon summer sun in the Mediterranean”. If you’re heading to Sicily, don’t overlook the remote, forested Nebrodi mount range. Scale Monte Soro and you will be rewarded with timeless views of Mount Etna and the Aeolian Islands.

Shop all fragrance here