It's a fresh start for fragrance - these spring scents will win you compliments

What could be more spring-like than a walk through a bluebell wood? This year, Molton Brown has taken the quintessential April bloom and paired it with the tartness of wild strawberry, warm amber accord, and the green earthiness of violet leaf absolute. Grab your leather boots and stride out.

If Akro's luscious, lemon cupcake-inspired Bake was all about cosy chillaxing, Breathe is the scent that (in the nicest way possible) boots you out off the sofa and into the great outdoors. Expect airy, green, energising notes of lavender and bergamot at the top, an refreshing pool of water notes at the heart, and a musky dry-down.

Is it too early to be thinking about an escape to the beach? Absolutely not. Here's an ode to cocktails by the shores of the Seychelles, where luscious coconut water plus a squeeze of lime mingles with salty, warm notes that evoke the sea air. It's fragrance's answer to flicking through a glossy holiday brochure in spring.

Just as the name suggests, this classic is a massive joy-bringer and the ultimate mood lifter in early spring. The citrus and fruit opening brings optimism to even a the flattest of grey March mornings. The rest of the fragrance – a medley of light-but-warm florals – brings to life all that is budding around us, like an olfactory sneak peek.

To our mind, it’s not spring in beauty land until the Daisies burst forth. This year, Marc Jacobs's limited edition perfume trio has bloomed in jaunty yellow, with notes as lively as the bottles look. Our pick of the bunch this season is Daisy Love Glow, which opens with the zing of lemon and bergamot before deepening into something a little spicier and longer-lingering, courtesy of clove cashmere musk and patchouli oil.

This new iteration of the classic Kenzo franchise remains faithful to its core notes, iris intertwined with jasmine, but writes an intriguing new chapter with flourishes of ink and blue vanilla.

A light, clean wisp of scent that sits on skin like olfactory white linen, Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Herba Fresca is one of our all-time spring favourites. The herb and spearmint scent is designed to evoke walking barefoot through freshly-cut grass, and it would be a miserable soul who’d resist that vision. One spritz and we can fully picture ourselves dawdling through morning dewdrops at a luxurious country retreat, en route to the spa.

Aquatic scents stir our senses this time of year, and that call to the sea is even more intense in this new iteration of Issey Miyake's classic scent. Here, the aquatic floral becomes a deeper dive with a Posidonia accord of seagrass, combined with ylang-ylang, and vanilla to wrap you like a warm, soft towel as you emerge from the waters.

As April rolls into May, we crave something a little more robust; a scent that will segue smoothly into early summer. It has to be rose, and there's none finer than's Aerin's. This is grown-up, fresh, refined rose (we like to think of it as the perfectly cut shift dress of perfume), balanced at first by clean, watery notes, and as it dries down by skin-like, warmth-filled ambroxan and musk.

This, to us, is Florence in the springtime. The home of some of the most exquisite orris root (the part of the iris from which the scent is extracted) in the world and, of course, A Room With A View, what could be more romantic and spring-like? Iris has a powdery quality, and while it often can risk feeling dated, this iteration is spliced with orange blossom, which makes it modern, clean, and strangely comforting.

We fell for this at first sniff on drizzly day, as it transported us somewhere a little less grey - exactly what we look for in our scented spring fling. Not only is it beautifully packaged in a coloured glass bottle imbued with the sunset shades for which the Balearic island is so famed, the patchouli and mandarin notes smell like the promise of an approaching summer.