The garden at Sissinghurst Castle Garden
Discover why Sissinghurst is famous as the epitome of the English garden and explore its series of garden rooms, each filled with different planting schemes and unique designs. Heralded for its beauty and diversity, the garden is a result of the creative tension between Harold Nicolson's formal design and the exuberant planting of Vita Sackville-West.
Your visit to the garden
High Summer
The garden is filled with contrasting colours in the height of summer. The Cottage Garden, which is renowned for fiery golden hues, stands in stark contrast to the White Garden, which shimmers with moonlit planting.
September
Towards the end of summer, the sunflowers surge skyward and many of the herbaceous plants such as Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’ (sneezeweed), Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ and Hedichyum coccineum ‘Tara’ have a real presence and stature in the borders.
The Cottage Garden peaks again in September, with a jungle-like atmosphere and flowers that creep, climb and clamber through the borders. Every shade of red, orange and yellow is used to create a harmonious but lively colour scheme. Pause on the seat around the trunk of the katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) and breathe in its gloriously sweet scent of toffee. It's the perfect place to stop and take a moment to admire a sunset painted with flowers.
Late summer highlights
Beyond the most famous areas, there are many more spaces and features to discover in the garden at Sissinghurst
The Cottage Garden
See the warm reds and golds that evoke a sunset and mark out the South Cottage Garden, which is a riot of colour from spring into late summer and autumn.
Autumn in the garden
With longer shadows and colder days our garden transforms with the new season. With lots of autumnal highlights through the garden and out on the estate there's still plenty to see during your visit.
Vita was very keen to provide a garden that had interest throughout most of the year. To do this she created different garden rooms with seasonal planting which provided moments of colour from spring through to autumn. This legacy of planting serves the present-day garden very well with seasonal flourishes that last until the end of autumn.
The Purple Border
This border comes into its own during the early autumn and provides a contrast to some of the other colours in the garden.
Views, vistas and photography
With such a diverse estate of parkland, woodland, wetland and farmland there are some great opportunities to take a wide variety of pictures. Here are just a few ideas that might make for a great picture, let us know what your favourite spot is and if you found some of your own.
The White Garden
Wander through the White Garden for a refreshing contrast to the more colourful parts of the garden. Vita decided that only the colours of white, green, grey and silver were to be allowed to grow in this garden and it's now one of the most famous areas at Sissinghurst.
The origins
Vita understood that when colour is restricted, the gardener has to focus on creating interest and drama with different shapes, textures and form.
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. Look out for evidence of his all-important structure here, too – yew and box hedging allow the white flowers and silver foliage to shine out against the dark background.
Documenting the garden's creation
In her plans, Vita imagined ‘a low sea of grey clumps of foliage, pierced here and there with tall white flowers’ and by 1953 she was able to report to her Observer readers how this vision was progressing.
She writes about various grey mounds: artemisia, the silver Cineraria maritima, grey santolina and Achillea ageratifolia. These are pierced with the upright white trumpets of Lilium regale and the white spires of eremurus, foxgloves and delphiniums.
There are shrubs to add volume and structure; Hydrangea grandiflora, a white cistus, Paeonia suffruticosa subsp. Rockii and Buddleia nivea as well as trees such as Hippophae rhamnoides, a Pyrus salicifolia ‘Pendula’ and almond trees lining the central path. The giant Arabian thistle Onopordon arabicum surges up 8 feet into the air, whilst foamy gypsophila softens the planting.
Today, the garden team strives to maintain the White Garden in this way using a mixture of shrubs, roses, perennials and annuals to create interest and drama.
A worthwhile challenge
It was the contrast of all these plants together that created interest for the eye, despite the absence of colour. Vita seemed to relish the challenge, writing:
It is something more than merely interesting. It is great fun and endlessly amusing as an experiment, capable of perennial improvement, as you take away the things that don’t fit in, or that don’t satisfy you, and replace them by something you like better
Delos
Experience a taste of island life as you walk through Delos, the area of the garden named after the Greek island and inspired by Vita and Harold's visits there.
The couple had wanted to emulate the feel of the island both in planting and with a ruined feel but, unfortunately, the Kent climate and the garden's north-facing position proved problematic. This, combined with their limited knowledge of Mediterranean planting, meant that it never really became all they hoped it would be.
A must-see in the garden
Regional Curator Dr Jerzy J Kierkuc-Bielinski highlights a feature of Delos that you shouldn't miss:
'The garden rooms at Sissinghurst contain a number of objects that evoke the worlds of ancient Rome or of ancient Greece. Amongst these, I think that the group of Hellenistic altars from the sacred island of Delos are the most intriguing. What ancient rites or sacrifices were performed at these altars?
'Harold Nicolson’s ancestor Captain Hamilton fought in the Greek War of Independence during the 1820s. It was he who brought the altars from Delos to Shanganagh Castle in Ireland. From there they would eventually be brought to Sissinghurst by Harold.'
Would you like to know more about our team's priorities when you visit? Our Gardeners' Cuttings are monthly updates written by the garden team that can be picked up at the garden entrance or read online.
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Gardens in Kent
Wander through the National Trust’s summer gardens in Kent, where vibrant borders and fragrant blooms await. Marvel at over 300 varieties of old roses at Sissinghurst Castle, stroll through pastel-hued rose avenues at Chartwell, and bask in the sweet scent of pink Octavia Hill roses at Emmetts Garden. From fiery rudbeckia and amber lilies to cascading white gladioli and Japanese anemones, Kent’s historic gardens are bursting with seasonal colour and timeless charm.