To finish the series on a recent trip to Sissinghurst Castle Gardens that I’ve been running all week, I thought I’d  look back at some photographs I took in May 2014 on my first visit to this inspiring horticultural paradise, the creation of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. It was the 7th May last year, to be accurate and the weather was a mixture of sunshine and rain after a mild winter and a warm and wet spring. I was unwell for much of last year so I never quite got my act together with these photographs and so I’ve not put them up on here until now. I’m glad that I didn’t because they are a fascinating contrast to the shots I took last Sunday when I found that the gardens had exploded with life and colour. Apparently, I was told, Spring 2014 had been glorious at Sissinghurst but I’d arrived when the bulbs had finished flowering and the summer plants were still to come. Nevertheless, there is always something interesting to see in these gardens and the more familiar the garden, the more interesting it is to watch how it grows.  Take a look at these photos and then, maybe glance back to the same locations to see how they blossomed this June. Next year I plan to return – maybe in July – and I shall take some more photographs.

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In today’s blog about my trip to Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, I thought I’d include some of the photographs that I took of individual plants just because I liked them. Sissinghurst is all about the group plantings and experiments with colour that the gardens creator Vita Sackville-West made very much her own but there is as much pleasure sometimes in getting in close and enjoying particular plants for their own individual qualities. Here they are – I hope you like them too. We were very lucky this June to see so many different varieties in bloom all at the same time. Some of them are rare and others are old favourites but after a day wandering around Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, our eyes are opened to every one of their particular glories. Enjoy!

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Yesterday I wrote about Sissinghurst’s famous White Garden so, today, I thought you’d like to see the world beyond white – or, rather white, grey and green as its creator, Vita Sackville-West insisted. I’m devoting my regular blogs to Sissinghurst Castle Gardens all week after the inspirational trip I took there last Sunday. If you haven’t managed to go there yet then go but, until then, maybe you’d like to take my virtual walk round because through all those archways and leafy openings, is a world of colour organised by Sackville-West and Sissinghurst’s present day gardeners with a sure grasp of the dramatic and aesthetic power of colours in different combinations. Come with me while we walk through the different ‘rooms’ in this, one of England’s very best gardens.

Tomorrow I shall take a closer look at some of the individual flowers that make up the Sissinghurst collection. Join me then.

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I’m writing about gardens this week excited that our delayed English June has finally got into gear in my own garden in Lewes, UK, but mostly because I’ve been inspired by a visit to the great gardens at Sissinghurst, an hour’s drive from here. Sissinghurst Castle Gardens were designed by the novelist, poet and gardening writer, Vita Sackville-West (1892 – 1962) and her husband the writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson who was mostly responsible for the architectural drawings and layouts of the individual plots. Their most famous creation is the White Garden at Sissinghurst which has been emulated throughout the world since they built it in 1950 when it was converted from their 1931 white and pink rose garden.

Vita Sackville-West’s White Garden was always not just white but a mix of white, grey and green. We often forget to comment about the foliage of many flowering plants ignoring how important it is  to the over-all impression.

Vita said that she also believed in exaggeration in her plantings – it was all about big groups in big masses. Again inspired by Jekyll, she emphasised that gardens shouldn’t be too tidy and that self-seeding plants should be allowed to grow where they fall – well as much as possible. The look is controlled chaos which is much more difficult to achieve than it looks.

The gardeners here at Sissinghurst have carried on her instructions by letting the garden change and grow while continuing to reflect Vita’s original ideas.

The result, especially in the White Garden has caught the imaginations of generations of gardeners who flock here every year seeking inspiration. As you can see below, this little garden is a veritable encyclopaedia of just how many options we all have if we too decided to plant white.

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I spent most of last Sunday visiting the horticultural mecca that is Sissinghurst Castle in Kent.  It was created by the novelist, poet and garden designer Vita Sackville-West (1892 – 1962) and her writer-diplomat husband Harold Nicolson (1886 – 1968).

Their open marriage and versatile sexualities as well as their circle of mostly Bloomsbury Group friends has given the gardens a frisson of posh bohemianism other splendid  gardens might lack.

Now their writing achievements and romantic liaisons take backstage to their greatest legacy, the garden they left behind.  Vita’s brilliance as a garden designer is still there for all to see and it’s possibly best to remember her as someone who didn’t mind getting mud on her elegant fingers.

Sissinghurst is now one of England’s most popular tourist attractions and it was delightful to be asked by two visiting friends from the USA, Bill and Mike, to take them there for the day. I don’t think they were disappointed.

There was a lot to see so I shall show you some of the highlights of these gardens as they were this June, over the next three days.

If we do have an idea about what is typically English in gardening terms, then it is here in abundance, everywhere you look.

Travelling with friends who share my enthusiasm for photography meant that I made it into these shots too. I suspect that my friend Bill Hemmig has a parallel set of photographs.

We caught the wisteria just in time.

Today, I’m concentrating on the layout and buildings of this estate which is called Sissinghurst Castle but isn’t a castle at all. When the Nicolsons found it, was a derelict ruin that was once a stately medieval manor house. Vita Sackville-West, who was the gardening columnist for the Observer newspaper, designed the gardens as a series of interconnected ‘rooms’  said to reflect her nostalgia for her family’s stately pile of Knole House, in Kent, which she didn’t inherit as the eldest child because she was a woman. These ‘rooms’ each have their own character and contrasted plantings – the most famous of which is the White Garden (the subject of the next blog) which still has the power to wow us with its single-minded originality.

Brilliantly thought through, the gardens, often so colourful, are bold enough to allow us to enjoy the beauty of green as in the elegantly-shaped monochrome centre of the maze, above, and the lovely panoramic walk below.

What better than finding at one end of this grassy corridor, not just a statue, but a watery idyll. Sissinghurst is nothing if it’s not romantic.

At the other end of the walk, Mike Ingham found a good use for the seat designed by Edwin Lutyens.

There are a number of houses on the estate including the one below where Vita and Harold actually lived.

Their two sons occupied the house below bordering onto the famous White Garden. When your marital arrangements were as complicated as Vita and Harold’s, it must have been handy having a number of houses at your disposal.

Vita had her writing room, a marvellously gloomy book-lined study in the free-standing tower.

Nowhere though on the estate are any of the rooms that grand, well by Edwardian upper-middle class standards,  and Vita’s room is quite small and cluttered in  its smartly neo-Medieval  ambience.

Today and in Vita’s designs, the buildings are really backdrops for the plantings  and they change their appearance many times as you walk around the different rooms.

In case you want to know more about Vita Sackville-West the poet, here’s a recording of her reading her poem The Land. The poem gives us an insight into the mind that loved the soil and turned it, here at Sissinghurst, into her masterpiece. I was glad that I was able to show my American friends who after a week in London, needed to see a piece of English countryside. Where better than Sissinghurst?

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