Sissinghurst: a writer’s garden
“But you, oh gardener, poet that you be
Though unaware, now use your seeds like words
And make them lilt with color nicely flung.”
Renowned novelist and member of the Bloomsbury literary circle that included her close friend Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West is equally lauded for her passion for gardening and garden design. She wrote a weekly column on gardening in The Observer from 1946 to 1957 and with her husband Harold Nicolson, an author and diplomat, created one of the most visited and inspirational gardens in the world.
Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, 1939. Photo by Gisele Freund, Getty Images
In 1930, the couple bought the derelict shell of a moated 16th-century manor house in the Weald of Kent. They restored the buildings and spent the next four decades creating the renowned gardens of Sissinghurst Castle.
South Cottage, a remnant of the original Victorian house
“For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation.” Vita Sackville-West
Sackville-West designed a series of “garden rooms”, each with a different colour scheme or theme, enclosed by high clipped hedges and pink brick walls. The rooms and doorways are arranged to offer glimpses into other parts of the garden. She described the concept as "a combination of long axial walks, usually with terminal points, and the more intimate surprise of small geometrical gardens opening off them, rather as the rooms of an enormous house would open off the corridors".
The garden is designed around walkways (corridors) and garden rooms
Sissinghurst well-known spaces include a graceful lime walk, herb and cottage gardens, the Spring Garden which is carpeted with bluebells in that season, and the yellow, red and orange tones of the garden surrounding South Cottage, a remnant of the Elizabethan house. A large orchard leads down to the old moat and the Moat Walk beside the water. An exuberant Purple Border boasts a profusion of plants with hues of blue, pink, lilac, and purple.
The lush Purple Border
The fabled White Garden is considered the most remarkable and influential of all of Sissinghurst's garden rooms. Set around a weeping pear tree, its serene beauty derives from a limited palette of white, silver, grey, and green planting. “I am trying to make a grey, green, and white garden. This is an experiment which I ardently hope may be successful, though I doubt it … All the same, I cannot help hoping that the great ghostly barn owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer, in the twilight — the pale garden that I am now planting, under the first flakes of snow.”
The famous White Garden
The Rose Garden was another of Sackville-West’s favourite 'rooms,' the enormous variety of roses described as “one of the finest collections in the world" by writer Anne Scott-James. Constructed on the site of the old kitchen garden, the Rose Garden features masses of old roses planted with romantic profusion. Their history appealed to her as much as their appearance: "… there is nothing scrimpy or stingy about them. They have a generosity which is as desirable in plants as in people."
The Rose Garden
Informal massing of plants was Sackville-West's deliberate choice, and has become one of Sissinghurst's defining features. “Cram, cram, cram, every chink and cranny … I like generosity wherever I find it, whether in gardens or elsewhere … Always exaggerate rather than stint. Masses are more effective than mingies.” Writer Jane Brown describes the Rose Garden, more than any other including the White, as expressing "the essence of Vita's gardening personality, just as her writing-room enshrines her poetic ghost”.
Massed, informal planting is a feature of Sissinghurst’s design
The Top Courtyard leads to the Tower through a lawn bordered with urns. Sackville-West’s writing room, with its heavy oak desk, is maintained largely as it was at the time of her death and offers glimpses into her intellectual life. Almost 4,000 books line the walls, arranged by theme including astronomy, Renaissance poetry, gender theory and gardening advice. The Tower was Sackville-West's private sanctum; out of bounds to all but her dogs and a small number of guests by invitation. Visitors to Sissinghurst can climb to the top of the tower for superb views over the entire garden and estate. A plaque affixed to the arch of the Tower is inscribed with words written by Harold Nicolson: "Here lived V. Sackville-West who made this garden". Sissinghurst is currently managed by the UK’s National Trust.
An Elizabethan tower stands at the centre of this superb 20th century garden.
The Lime Walk
Books about Sissinghurst
