Sissinghurst Castle Garden

About Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Heralded for its beauty and diversity, the garden at Sissinghurst is among the most famous gardens in the world.
Vita often wrote of Sissinghurst: ‘The heavy golden sunshine enriched the old brick with a kind of patina, and made the tower cast a long shadow across the grass, like the finger of a gigantic sundial veering slowly with the sun. Everything was hushed and drowsy and silent but for the coo of the white pigeons.’

The Rose Garden

Vita envisaged the Rose Garden as a ‘tumble of roses and honeysuckle, figs and vines’. Whereas Harold’s keenness for strict geometry is evident in the circular shaped hedge, or Rondel, at the west end of the garden

The White Garden

Until 1950, the White Garden had been filled with roses but as they outgrew their space they were transferred to what was to become the Rose Garden.

When planning the garden, Harold found some white gladioli, white irises, white pompom dahlias and the white Japanese anemones, which he and Vita both loved.

The Cottage Garden

Warm reds and gold mark out the Cottage Garden, which is a riot of colour in late summer and autumn.

The Herb Garden

Set beyond the Nuttery, the Herb Garden looks and smells wonderful. As Adam Nicolson, Vita and Harold’s grandson says: ‘Only the beautiful, the pungent and the elegant are allowed here’.

The Nuttery

Kentish cobnuts, a variety of hazelnut, create a shady haven for birds and visitors alike in the Nuttery.
In April 1930, Harold recorded in his diary the moment he and Vita decided to buy Sissinghurst – ‘We came suddenly upon the nutwalk’, he wrote, ‘and that settled it’.

The Lime Walk

Also known as the Spring Garden, this is one area where Harold controlled the design and planting. Long beds of tulips, fritillaries and hyacinths are marked out by an avenue of pleached limes, punctuated by generous terracotta pots, every inch bursting with colour for about four weeks.

Delos

Named after the Greek island of Delos, in 2019 this part of the garden was reworked to reflect Harold and Vita’s original ideas.

The Moat Walk

The Moat Walk is defined on one side by the remains of an Elizabethan wall, and on the other by a bank of bright yellow azaleas. These were planted in 1946 by Vita with £100 she won from the Royal Society of Literature’s Heinemann Prize for her poem The Garden.

The Orchard

Vita and Harold always intended the Orchard to be half garden, half wilderness. Roses were planted against the boughs of old apple trees, with winding paths mown in long grasses. The gazebo was built in 1969 in memory of Harold Nicolson.

The Purple Border

The Purple Border is not made up of purple plants alone. One of our gardeners says, ‘Not much of it is purple. It’s a clever mix of pink, blues, lilacs and purples.’

Roses are planted in the border; beauties such as ‘Charles de Mills’ and Rosa moysii along with hazel brushwood help to keep the plants upright.

Free welcome talks and estate walks leaflets. Café, restaurant, gift, secondhand book and plant shops are open from 10am-5.30pm.