One of the most visited and most written-about gardens in the world
Sissinghurst Castle Garden is one of the most visited and most written-about gardens in the world — a series of intimate outdoor rooms created by the writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson around the ruined remains of an Elizabethan manor in the Kentish Weald. The garden they fashioned from the early 1930s onwards became a touchstone of twentieth-century design: romantic in its planting, architectural in its bones.
The layout is Nicolson's — formal axes, enclosing hedges of yew and box, a series of distinct rooms each with its own mood and palette. The planting is Sackville-West's — exuberant, layered, often monochromatic, always surprising. The White Garden, the Rose Garden, the Cottage Garden and the Herb Garden each reward close inspection. The Tower from which Vita wrote offers long views over the surrounding farmland.
We visit Sissinghurst in May when the garden is at its most theatrical: the tulips of the Cottage Garden giving way to the first roses, the White Garden immaculate, the whole enclosure humming with bees. It is a garden that speaks of civilised passion — and that repays every minute of attention.