A gallery of trees lines the Lime Walk and creates a frame work for planting.
A vision recaptured
65 years on, we’ve extensively researched the original vision at the heart of the garden’s creation. Using Vita and Harold’s ideas from their detailed garden notebooks and our archives we’re gently reimagining and conserving Sissinghurst Castle Garden.
Recapturing the kind of look and feel which the couple loved is a challenge. Head Gardener, Troy Smith explains: “Our conservation and reimagining of Vita and Harold’s well-loved garden won’t be heavy handed or invasive. It’s all about light touches – allowing a rose to billow or a meadow to flourish. It’ll be a series of small interventions added together to ensure the garden retains the romance and faded beauty that attracted the couple to live here”.
“It’s only by gardening instinctively, with a freedom and ease that comes from a deep absorption and close affinity with the place, that the style and spirit of the garden will be maintained, enriched and enhanced, whilst ensuring visitors still enjoy time spent here year-round” adds Troy.
Over the next seven years, there’ll be subtle but significant changes to help restore the direct relationship between the garden and its rural landscape. We’ll bring the countryside that Harold and Vita so loved back into view from all around Sissinghurst Castle Garden. We’ve started by removing the hornbeam hedge beyond the nuttery to open the view to the lakes, and we’ll reinstate farm ponds and transform grassed areas back to wildflower meadows too.
Keep checking back to find out what we are doing each month.
If you have any pictures or memories from the 1950s at Sissinghurst Castle, please get in touch sissinghurstcastle@nationaltrust.org.uk