Stereoplasm: Garden Creatures Collection Review

As part of Stereoplasm's St Patrick celebrations, they released their Garden Creatures collection, comprised of some green dominant scents. I personally am not a huge fan of green scents, but I've definitely found scents that I didn't think would appeal to me that I've loved. 

This is a seasonal collection, but you can always get this from Stereoplasm's Unlisted Fragrance option, which means you can get just about any scent they've made in the past without needing to wait for a reissue event! 

Libatious Leprechaun: Aged whiskey and oak reveal prickly pear, spicy ginger and feisty bergamot.

This is actually delicious, although I didn't really get a lot of the notes listed? To be fair, my skin absolutely hates alcohol and I typically get no alcohol in any blend that lists it, so your milage may vary. This scent is all sweet pear and a bit of ginger, and it hit me that this reminds me a lot of Mourning Dove (Nui Cobalt Designs). It has that edge of breezy sweet floral, sliced pears, although the ginger adds a little bit of heat and warmth around the edges of this scent. Sweet pears was definitely the dominant note in this, with a hint of grassy lawns, lilies and crushed ginger, but no whiskey and oak at all for me. 

I personally have to say, this is my favorite out of the collection. It's just a hint of green without going overboard, and I love that the freshness of the pear delivers green without being overwhelmingly just, grass. 

Perfect for: getting completely plastered on a weekend except still being relatively fancy about it. It's elegant so you still smell lovely, even if you end up face down in someone else's lawn soaked in actual whiskey. 

Green Gremlin: Juicy bamboo, slimy lychee skins, sour green apple cores and rustling tall dry grass

This opens with a breeze from a damp lawn with the barest hint of sour candy apples. This scent, I have to say, is very much in line with the Saint Patrick theme. After dry down it just veers to Green Town, and the peak of its wear occurs an hour in, which is all crushed, dewy grass, a freshly cut lawn. This is almost identical to Temperance (Andromeda's Curse), which is literally just the embodiment of a traditional green scent, grass clippings and really intensely strong. Just imagine lying on a lawn, ripping out grass, a little bit of apple cordial that's just spilled from a juice box, while someone is hacking away at the grass with a lawnmower.  

On my skin, I don't get much of the lychee or apples despite typically amping sweeter notes, but it slowly gets a little fruitier around the two hour mark, although this has a slightly shorter wear, coming in at 2 hours max. This scent is a little simpler than the notes would suggest, and I would have loved to see more of the fruity notes peek out more. I also don't normally go for green scents, so I think some of the nuances may have been lost on me. 

Perfect for: actually wanting to smell like a field of freshly cut grass in the afternoon, and walking as far away as possible from the sticky patch of apple cordial. This like... Elphaba. Very green. 

Gone Gnome: Top notes of cilantro and key lime rooted in fresh garden basil, english cucumber and melon blossom.

This scent when wet is all vegetal, it's sliced cucumber and the green rind of a watermelon. The basil here is also faint, but gives it just a little kick of savoury herbs to round out the scent. Dried down, this is a great balance of the raw, sliced cucumber, the watermelon rind while balanced with a hint of bitter cilantro/coriander and topped with a bit of sweetness from the lime. At around an hour, it turns into this lovely sweet summery watermelon, like slices of watermelon, and watermelon flavored hard candy. In comparison to the others in this collection, this does morph a little more, but its really a seesaw between the cucumber and the watermelon for me. 

For me, this reminds me a lot of Sophistry (Nui Cobalt Designs) where they manage to take that vegetal cucumber essence, but make it wearable and really chic, against my expectations. I must confess, I absolutely detest cucumber in all forms, and I'm always fearful of it. I'm not quite, Lovecraft level terror of salads and cucumbers, but I wouldn't go out of my way for cucumber. However, this scent almost makes me enjoy cucumber, because I genuinely think this would be such a great summer scent. It's got those elements of fresh, sliced watery cucumber and watermelon, and also that clean sweetness that comes out. It's not cloying, heavy or dense, but it's super refreshing and a fun scent, and in a muggy, or horrifically dry summer, this feels like a great pick me up. 

Perfect for: The beach episode. It's summer! The sand, the sea, and smashing a watermelon blindfolded, it's the peak of youth. Except it's haunted by giant cucumbers, but you can always slice them up for a little eye mask.  

Disclaimer: These scents were was sent for review. I was not sponsored for this review or affiliated with this brand, and all opinions are my own, and do not reflect the brand's opinions or interests.