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Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Of all the famous English gardens,

Sissinghurst is perhaps the most familiar

because of one of the gardens of note it

contains: the White Garden. This is just

one of ten distinct garden “rooms,” each

with a different feel, built around the

remnants of a once-grand Elizabethan

manor house. The gardens were created

in the 1930’s by Vita Sackville-West and

her husband Sir Harold Nicolson – he a

diplomat turned reviewer, she a writer,

poet and newspaper columnist – on

this ancient site in the Weald of Kent

southeast of London. The gardens are

set off by a tall tower of pale pink brick

which captivated Vita when she ﬁ rst saw Sissinghurst; she wrote some 20 books in the Tower room and

it remained her refuge until her death at age 70.

The site, whose name derives from a Saxon clearing in

the woods, has been settled since the late 12th century.

During the early middle ages a stone manor house

surrounded by a moat (of which three arms remain) was

built. After the property was purchased by the Baker

family in the 1400’s, the old medieval manor house was

demolished and replaced with a grand mansion. The

Elizabethan manor house, based on a double courtyard,

and tower were built by Sir Richard Baker during 1560-

70. The imposing archway and Gatehouse were added

later. By the mid

1600’s Sissinghurst

was neglected,

and remained so

for another 100 years. Eventually the house was leased to the

government and used as a prison camp for French prisoners during

the Seven Years War. (It was these prisoners that gave the title ‘castle’

to the site, as the house was very similar to a French chateau.) The

buildings were heavily damaged during this time, so at the end of the

war many of them were demolished, leaving only the entrance range,

the tower and a few of the outbuildings. Over the next 50 years the

buildings were occupied by the poor who worked on the estate farm

and nearby brickyard. When the large Victorian farmhouse was built

in 1855, the old buildings were scarcely habitable. Sissinghurst Castle

once again went up for sale in 1928. On a rainy day in April 1930

Vita Sackville-West came looking for an old house where she could

make a new garden, fell in love with Sissinghurst Castle and she and

her husband bought it, along with 400 acres of farmland. They made

A Horticulture Information article from the Wisconsin Master Gardener website, posted 8 Dec 8 2017

Sissinghurst Castle Garden.

Countryside around Sissinghurst.

Side entrance to Priest’s House.

few changes to the remaining buildings, other

than carrying out some careful restoration, but

completely transformed the grounds.

It took three years of thinking, planning, and

cleaning up the piles of junk left behind by former

occupants before they really started creating

the gardens. During this time they discovered

the moat wall of the medieval manor house and

created a lake to the south by damming a stream

that ﬁ lled two marshy areas. Eventually English

yew (Taxus baccata) hedges were planted, but

it took many years for the slow-growing plants

to get large enough to ﬁ t the intended design.

Limited funds also constrained the development

of the gardens to a certain extent.

The design of the garden was partly determined by the existing

buildings and walls, and the moat which provide a romantic backdrop

to the plantings. Three new walls were added, as well as many

hedges of yew, boxwood, rose and hornbeam, to divide the six acres

into separate gardens, linked by vistas formed by gaps in the walls

and hedges, from which smaller gardens open unexpectedly. Harold

described his aim as ‘a combination of expectation and surprise.’

The succession of intimate enclosures makes Sissinghurst seem

much larger than it really is. This garden is also rather unique in

that, unlike most gardens that are located next to the owner’s home,

these gardens were created within the ruins of a home. They lived

amid the ruins as if it were still a manor house. Instead of living in

the farmhouse (which they rented out), Vita and Harold had rooms in

the South Cottage; the kitchen,

dining room and boy’s rooms

were in the Priest’s House; and

the entry range’s stables were

transformed into the Library, or

family room, where a TV was

installed in 1939. The garden

next to the Priest’s House was

used as a dining room whenever

the weather permitted; the

courtyard was their entry hall;

and the tower was Vita’s private

work space.

Layout of the gardens at Sissinghurst. From http://www.invectis.co.uk/sissing/

The Tower from the Cottage Garden.

Old farm buildings and countryside beyond in spring.

Sissinghurst is a sophisticated garden, with the plantings deliberately varied from one part to another.

The formal herb garden and paved lime walk contrasts with the unmown orchard; the cottage garden

boasts a profusion of ﬂ owers in hot colors, while the white

garden eliminates all colors but white and green. Harold‘s taste

leaned toward the classical, with its geometrical patterns and

symmetrical arrangement of steps, paths, pots and statuary,

while Vita preferred a more romantic approach. She ﬁ lled the

beds and enclosures he created with a profusion of plants that

might spill onto or creep over the path – but the hedges were always neatly trimmed and plantings

kept free of weeds with a mulch of spent hops. She disliked regimented rows of ﬂ owers and carefully

grouped the plants according to color, texture and season.

The garden was ﬁ rst opened to the public in 1938,

while Vita and Harold were still living there. When Vita

died in 1962, Harold and her two sons transferred

ownership to the National Trust to preserve the

garden (completed in April 1967). Now it is enjoyed

every summer by thousands of visitors from around

the world. The National Trust has tried to maintain

Sissinghurst looking the way that it did when Vita lived

there, but some ﬂ owers and trees have had to be

removed or replaced due to age or disease; additional

ﬂ owers were added to the rose garden (which was

intended to be ﬁ lled with roses during June but little

else for the rest of the growing season) that bloom

before and after the roses bloom, changing the feel of

that garden; and grass and uneven paved paths were replaced with level stone paths and bushes were

trimmed away from paths for the comfort and safety of visitors.

Oast House and Granary

As you walk in from the parking area you pass The Garden Shop and The Coffee Shop housed in

what was old farm buildings. Then it’s on to get tickets at Visitor Reception and Information in the small

building just before the big oast houses. Kent is famous for it’s oast houses – buildings traditionally

used for drying hops, an essential ingredient for making beer. The buildings have a tilted white cowl

on top for venting the steam and hot air that was used to dry the plants. Few are used for their original

function; most have been converted into living spaces or storage. At Sissinghurst they now house an

exhibition on the historical, personal and horticultural story of the estate and garden.

“Profusion, even extravagance and

exuberance within the conﬁ nes of

the utmost linear severity”.

– Vita Sackville-West

Alliums and columbines provide color in the Rose

Garden in the spring.

The Plant Shop (L), Visitor Reception (C), and the oast houses converted to house exhibitions (R).

The adjacent Elizabethan barn reﬂ ects the importance of the farm surrounding the castle and gardens,

while the former granary is now a restaurant serving hungry visitors. The gift shop is in the old farm

building next to the barn.

The Front Courtyard

The entrance is the largest and oldest part of the surviving building dating from about 1490. It was

originally the service range, with stables on one side of the archway and lodging for servants on the

other, and was one of the ﬁ rst big houses in Kent to be built of brick instead of stone and wood. When

Vita and Harold bought the property, the archway was bricked up on both sides. One of their ﬁ rst

improvements was to open it up. There are two strange alcoves, shaped like ﬁ replaces ﬂ anking the

entrance archway.

Inside the courtyard, the bed along the north wall is planted with nothing but purple-ﬂ owering plants.

This purple border was probably a deliberate response to Gertrude Jekyll’s comment that purple was

a difﬁ cult color in gardens and should be used sparingly. Vita combined numerous shades of magenta,

The granary now houses the restaurant (L), the Elizabethan barn (C) and gift shop in building by barn (R).

Walking toward the entrance to the gardens at Sissinghurt (L), the tower and service range (C) and the entrance

archway through the service range.

The purple border in the front courtyard from the tower (L), in spring (C) and in late summer (R).

mauve, lavender, and purple to create a rich, monochromatic tapestry. This border looks best on a cloudy

day, as the ﬂ owers are a bit dull in the sunshine, but imagining it as an old tapestry hanging against

the wall of a grand hall, makes it very effective. The purple border is the showpiece of the courtyard,

but Vita loved roses and clematis, so they were used here, too. Red (‘Allen Chandler’) and pale pink

(‘Meg’) roses climb up the old brick walls around the archway and toward the dormer windows, and

clematis and other vines cover other parts of the house and walls. A number of stone sinks dating from

the 19 century were salvaged from the junk left on the property and used to grow alpine plants. Other

colors sneak into the beds around the rest of the perimeter of the lawn. Some plants we would consider

weeds are included in this garden, including the purple form of Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis)

and purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) that blooms later in the season.

The entry courtyard was difﬁ cult to design because the

arches of the entry range and tower are not directly

opposite each other; the building angles inward, so the

north and south walls are different lengths (see the map,

above); and the two buildings are at different levels. Instead

of paving the entire courtyard (which they couldn’t afford),

the ground was graded and a path installed between the

broad lawn and beds along the perimeter. The paved path,

ﬂ anked by topiary Irish yew trees (which Vita preferred left

as shaggy pillars), leads to

the tower.

The Tower & Tower Lawn

The tower was what captivated Vita when she ﬁ rst saw Sissinghurst and

is where she spent considerable time reading and writing books, including

her best novel All Passion Spent, the life of her grandmother Pepita, and

gardening articles which she contributed weekly to the Observer for 16

years. The four-story Elizabethan tower with its two octagonal turrets is

a focal point of the gardens. A wooden spiral staircase leads up from the

archway at the base, past the cluttered room where Vita wrote.

The Tower Lawn, also known as the Lower Courtyard, is the most simple

of Sissinghurst’s garden rooms. Although this area does have trees and

ﬂ owers, the lawn is the dominant feature. A visitor ﬁ rst sees a glimpse of

this lawn looking through the tower’s archway from the Front Courtyard.

This garden is an important part of the overall design, serving as the hub

Dame’s rocket in the purple border (L), Euphorbia myrsinities growing in a stone sink (C), and Joe-pye weed (R).

Irish yews along the path in the entry courtyard.

The tall tower of pale pink brick

at Sissinghurst Castle Garden.

for the main axes, and providing a “rest” from the other intensely planted areas. This is the open area

from which visitors can appreciate the lines of the garden. At the top of the tower, the view includes not

only the 12 acres of garden, but also the Weald up to the North Downs 12 miles away and the woods,

lakes and oast-houses of the Sissinghurst estate. This is the only place to see the garden in its entirety.

Looking down from the ﬂ at roof of the tower between the turrets, the layout of the gardens is quite clear.

The Yew Walk

The long yew walk is nothing more than two narrow green hedges enclosing the paved pathway, but

when viewed from the opening from the Rose Garden or White Garden, a sense of distance is created

in a fairly conﬁ ned space. The hedges also separate the Tower Lawn and Orchard and are one of two

central axes of the gardens. The yews weren’t spaced far enough apart to allow for their growth when

they got older, so the path isn’t wide enough for two people to walk side by side on the path – one of

the few ﬂ aws in the gardens’ design.

The Rose Garden

Roses were one of Vita’s favorite ﬂ owers, and they are an important

part of all the gardens. The Rose Garden is richly planted with old-

fashioned species which are at their peak for essentially only the

month of June.

The Rose Garden is in the walled space that was once the

garden of the Tudor manor. The yew hedges forming the Rondel

– enclosing a round patch of grass in the middle and with gaps in

The Tower Lawn (L), looking up from the lawn at the Tower (C), and view of the front courtyard and Rose Garden

from the top of the Tower.

The Yew Walk, along the back of the Tower lawn with the South Cottage beyond (L), the sheared yew hedges from

the tower (C), and as seen from the Rose Garden (R).

Roses were one of Vita’s favorite ﬂ owers.

each quadrant leading to formal beds outlined in boxwood – were planted in 1932. Like the courtyard,

the Rose Garden is not a perfect rectangle, so dividing the space with the Rondel obscures the

imperfection. It was offset from the absolute center so it would line up with a doorway of the old Tudor

manor, making the western part of this garden larger than the eastern part. The tall hedges block views

from inside the Rondel into the Rose Garden, instead directing attention to a focal point at the end of

each walk. The curved wall at the east end reﬂ ects mimics the design of the best Italian gardens of the

16th and 17th centuries. By late summer the wall is covered with purple-ﬂ owered clematis. At one time

12 old crabapple trees lined the central walkway, but they were removed in the 1960’s. They were later

replaced with serviceberry (Amalanchier) trees.

Vita’s original intent was to have mainly a shrub rose border, not an herbaceous border. Peonies and

bearded iris were integrated with the old roses to bloom earlier, and clematis, a few lilies and Japanese

anemones ﬂ owered later, but she generally wasn’t in residence in late summer, so had no need to

have this garden colorful all summer. After taking responsibility for the garden, the National Trust added

many more perennials so the garden would be attractive in late summer. Another change was to pave

the mown grass paths through the Rose Garden since the grass couldn’t stand up to the heavy trafﬁ c

of visitors; Vita might have had this done earlier had they been able to afford to.

The Lime Walk

This part of the garden was designed, planted and maintained by Harold himself. It was intended to be

a classical garden after the Italian model, with statues at each end and Tuscan pots at intervals along

the way. The odd angle, relative to the other gardens, was necessary because of the 6 long rows of

hazelnut (ﬁ lbert) trees in the Nuttery, probably planted in the late 19th century, that the design had to

ﬁ t around. The axis of the Lime Walk lines up with the main walk of the Nuttery, to connect to the Rose

Garden.

The east end of the Rose Garden from the Tower (L), the Rondel from the Tower (LC), inside the Rondel (RC), and

the focal point of the curved wall at the east end (R).

Paved paths and many other shrubs and perennials were added (L), including lilac and bearded iris (LC), blue

agapanthus and white anemones (RC), and foxglove, iris and peonies along with this yellow rose (R).

The Lime Walk is at its peak in spring when spring-ﬂ owering bulbs are in bloom, before the pleached

limes (Tilia sp., with the common name of linden in North America) leaf out. (The trunks are kept free of

branches to about 7 feet, then three rows of branches are trained on three horizontal wires, creating, in

effect, a narrow hedge on stilts.) The trees are clipped each year to maintain their shape. In the summer

impatiens planted in the terracotta pots, imported from Siena, Italy in 1965, provide some color, but

the planting of bulbs is too dense to accommodate any other plants in the ground. Hornbeam hedges

separate this area from the Rose Garden and open pastures to the south. A statute of a Bacchante

terminates both the Lime Walk’s vista and the vista through the Rose Garden’s Rondel. Stone has

replaced the concrete pavers Harold was forced to use.

The Cottage Garden

The Cottage Garden was intended to be a private family garden, next to the South Cottage where

Vita and Harold lived. It was the ﬁ rst garden they planted; on the day they bought Sissinghurst, they

planted a white rose, ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’, against the cottage wall. It still survives, climbing up the

building, above the door and windows.

This garden has a simple plan of narrow, crossing paths, with Irish yews marking the corners of the

intersection. An antique copper boiler is the focal point of the intersection of the main paths. Before

Sissinghurst was taken over by the National Trust, the brick and stone paths had creeping thyme and

other self-sown ﬂ owers growing in them, but the number of visitors dictated otherwise and now the

paths are set in concrete.

This garden is representative of cottage gardens everywhere in England, but the color scheme is

completely different. Traditional cottage gardens tended to have plants blooming in shades of lavender,

Pleached linden trees line the Lime Walk (L), which is pruned in every summer to maintain their shape (C). A statue

terminates the Walk’s vista (R).

In the Cottage Garden, looking back at the Tower (L), the South Cottage with the white rose, ‘Madame Alfred

Carrière’ (not in bloom) on the wall (LC), and colorful ﬂ owers in front of the Cottage in late summer (RC and R).

pink and white, mainly because that’s all that was available before the 19th century. Vita used the latest

hybrids and new plant introductions in this garden, and restricted her choices to hot colors: yellows,

reds and oranges. The gardeners continue to add new plants, all in keeping with this scheme.

The Moat Walk

The Moat Walk is the name given to the sunken lawn that leads from the Cottage Garden to the moat.

This is the third arm of the moat that once surrounded the medieval manorhouse on three sides. The

northern and eastern arms are still ﬁ lled with water, but it proved too difﬁ cult to bring water back into

this southern one, so they settled for lawn instead. White wisteria (Wisteria ﬂ oribunda ‘Alba’) drips over

the walls in a cascade of blossom in June, making this a favorite of visitors at this time. Corydalis lutea

and other plants grow in the cracks of the ancient wall, but none of the plants are allowed to overtake

this medieval relic. The Moat Walk is separated from the Nuttery by a bank of azaleas.

At the end of the Moat Walk, on the opposite bank, stands a statue of Dionysus as the focal point from

the terrace at the opposite end of the walk, and coincidentally, from the tower steps.

Annuals and perennials blooming in hot colors ﬁ ll the Cottage Garden from spring to fall: orange wallﬂ ower, red

and yellow columbine and yellow iris (L); yellow iris, orange geum, bicolor columbine, yellow yarrow (LC and C);

red Japanese blood grass and dahlias, orange tithonia, yellow ‘Tara’ ginger (RC); red hot poker and red dahlias (R).

A brick landing near the Cottage Garden at the top of the Moat Walk (L) leads to the Moat Walk (LC) which has

blooming azaleas (RC) and white wisteria (R) in spring.

Corydalis grows in the brick walls (L). Perennials line the Moat Walk (C) that leads to the focal point of a statue of

Dionysus on the opposite bank of the moat (R).

The Herb Garden

The small, rectangular formal herb garden with its medicinal and aromatic plants is enclosed by

buttressed yews. A mixture of over a hundred varieties of herbs and useful ﬂ owers makes the Herb

Garden colorful as well as aromatic. The paths were originally creeping thyme over concrete slabs and

grass, but had to be replaced with brick and stone because of damage from foot trafﬁ c. The shallow

marble bowl – ﬁ lled with Sempervivums – in the middle was bought by Vita and Harold in Istanbul,

where it stood on its tripod of little lions in their sitting room when they lived there for a year. It sits on

an old millstone on a slightly raised bed of bricks fanning out from the center. The “chamomile seat”

was created by their chauffeur, Jack Cooper, from pieces of stone from the ruins of Sissinghurst Castle,

something that was very popular in medieval gardens.

The Orchard

The orchard sits between the two water-ﬁ lled arms of the moat in the place where the old medieval

manorhouse once stood. In the spring the area is ﬁ lled with white and yellow daffodils, so the grass is

not mowed until much later in the season, after the bulb foliage has died down. This gives a rather wild,

unkempt look to the place for while. Mown paths through this temporary meadow lead to the small,

octagonal gazebo at the junction of the two arms of the moat. The gazebo was build in 1969 by Nigel

and Benedict Nicolson as a memorial to their father, Harold, and was used as a private summer ofﬁ ce

with windows looking out onto the countryside rather than the garden. The rustic Boathouse is at the

corner of the orchard nearest the White Garden.

In 1987 the remaining old fruit trees that were probably planted in the ﬁ rst half of the 19th century were

blown down in a storm. The trees – mainly apples and pears – have been gradually replaced (so they

won’t all be the same age and end up dying at the same time).

The Herb Garden in spring (L). The marble bowl ﬁ lled with Sempervivums is supported by stone lions sitting on an

old millstone (C), while the “chamomile seat” is along one of the walls of yews (R).

The orchard from the Tower (L), autumn crocus in bloom under apple trees (LC). the unmown meadow in spring

with the gazebo beyond (RC), the Boathouse is at one corner with the gazebo at the far end (R).

Priest’s House & Delos

This building was restored to house the kitchen and dining room and the gardens around it were some

of the ﬁ rst to be created. The “Delos”, to the south of the house, which was laid out in 1935 and planted

with mainly earth tones, was named after the Greek altars that were once spaced along its path. Harold

came up with the idea for this garden when he visited Delos, a Greek Island in the Aegean Sea in 1935.

The area to the east was replanted in 1950 as the famous White Garden.

The White Garden

This garden is probably the most famous of the separate gardens at Sissinghurst. It was started in 1950

by replanting the garden to the east of the Priest’s House, retaining the original layout but fusing a color

scheme of silver and white: focusing on plants with gray or white foliage and ﬂ owers of mainly white, but

with touches of yellow. It is unclear what inspired Vita to create this monochromatic garden. Through her

writings we know she had been thinking about creating a white garden for at least a decade. Although

other white gardens in England (such as the phlox garden at Hidcote) predated this one, they did not

seem to have an inﬂ uence on the development of the White Garden at Sissinghurst. Some speculate

that she was inspired by descriptions of white gardens from hundreds of years earlier in Moghul India.

This garden is lovely through the seasons, but it was designed to be at its best in early July and

especially in the evenings or when illuminated by a full moon, since this garden was always used as

an outdoor dining room. In one corner there is a dining table shaded by a rose arbor supported by

broken columns (dubbed the “Erectheum”), where the family would eat whenever the weather allowed.

There is little ornamentation in this garden, with only the statue under a weeping pear and a large gray

Chinese jar, purchased by Harold in Egypt. The wrought iron arbor over the jar in the center of the

intersection of the main paths replaced almond trees that eventually died and were removed in 1970.

Brick steps lead into the Delos from the Courtyard Garden (L), a shady, informal garden (LC) adjacent to the Priest’s

House (RC and C).

The White Garden from the Tower, with the Priest’s house at left and enclosed by yew hedges (L). The garden has

only plants with white ﬂ owers and silver foliage (C). A path through the White Garden with the Tower beyond (R).

The most vigorous of the climbing roses (Rosa mulliganii) that had rambled through the trees was left

to be trained over, but not completely obscure, the arches of the arbor.

Vita wrote a description of her plantings in the White Garden in her a regular gardening column in

the Observer for July 5, 1955: “There is a white underplanting of various artemisias, including the old

aromatic Southernwood; the silvery Cineraria maritima, the grey santolina or Cotton Lavender; and

the creeping Achillea ageratifolia. Dozens of the white Regale lily (grown from seed) come up through

these. There are white delphiniums of the Paciﬁ c strain; white eremurus; white foxgloves in a shady

place on the north side of a wall; the foam of gypsophila; the white shrubby Hydrangea grandiﬂ ora; white

cistus; white tree peonies; Buddleia nivea; white campanulas and the white form of Platycodon mariesii,

the Chinese bellﬂ ower. There is a group of giant Arabian thistle, pure silver, 8 feet high. Two little sea

buckthorns, the grey willow-leaved Pyrus salicifolia sheltered the grey leaden statue of a Vestal Virgin.

Down the central path goes an avenue of white climbing roses, trailing up old almond trees. Later on

there will be white Japanese anemones and some white dahlias....” These plantings have remained

essentially unchanged, although the gardeners have introduced a few new plants.

– Susan Mahr, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Additional Information:

Sissinghurst Castle Garden – on The National Trust website at https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/

sissinghurst-castle-garden

Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent – Presented by Dave Parker at http://www.invectis.co.uk/sissing/

The central wrought iron arbor (L) has climbing roses growing over it (C). The orchard can be seen through an

opening in the yew hedge (R).

White lupine (L), columbine (LC), cosmos and Arabian thistle (C), roses (RC), and phlox (R) in the White Garden.