ALAN POWER: Thanks for downloading the National Trust
Gardens podcast. I'm Alan Power, the head gardener for the
National Trust at Stourhead in Wiltshire.
This is the third garden we'll be visiting in our series,
bringing you the secrets and sounds of some of the UK's most
beautiful gardens. Today, I'm going to be exploring
Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent. The garden here is
enclosed by 300 acres of farm and woodland. We'll head up an
Elizabethan Tower that was once a brutal prison hear how this
magical place was home to a great love-
VICKY MCBRIEN: That deep respect and love for each other really
is a thing that's fed everything here. Not just the gardens.
ALAN POWER: And find out how a working farm was restored to a
world famous garden the National Trust are preserving today.
TROY SMITH: It's a garden to explore, a series of intimacies
that you just have to find for yourself.
ALAN POWER: Sissinghurst was once a grand Tudor estate
visited by Queen Elizabeth I. Controversy came in the 18th
century when it became a brutal and murderous prison for French
captives in the Seven Years War. And after that, the land became
home to farm labourers with much of the castle and estate falling
into disrepair.
This was until the early 20th century when two unique people
came along.
JULIET NICHOLSON: A tired swimmer in the waves of time,
I throw my hands up:
Let the surface close:
Sink down through centuries to another clime,
And buried find the castle and the rose.
Buried in time and sleep,
So drowsy, overgrown,
That here the moss is green upon the stone,
And lichen stains the keep.
ALAN POWER: That was the start of Vita Sackville West's poem
Sissinghurst read by her eldest granddaughter Juliet Nicholson.
That extract perfectly captures the haunting spirit of the
garden which would become an escape and loving home for her,
her husband Harold Nicholson and their family.
The poet and novelist fell in love with the beautiful ruins.
She'd been denied inheritance of one of the grandest homes in
Britain, Knole, for being born a woman. So she set about creating
a home of her own here. Vita and Harold made Sissinghurst their
family home and the garden their life's work.
It would provide them with the spiritual fulfillment and
inspiration that their garden has provided to visitors ever
since. Today, we'll explore their legacy as romance and
formality collide in spectacular design here in the Weald of
Kent.
I'm standing in the Garden Of Sissinghurst at the foot of the
Elizabethan Tower, which really is the beating heart of the
estate.
And I'm surrounded by really inviting... little doorways and
entrances into the garden which I can't wait to see later.
To my left and right, there are two red brick walls with very
mysterious looking doorways and I know what they lead to, but I
can't wait to see it at this time of the year. I'm lucky
enough to be standing here with Troy Smith, the head gardener at
Sissinghurst.
And Troy, what was Vita's vision for this place?
TROY SMITH: That's a good question because they weren't
doing it for posterity or to show off.
Actually, for Vita and for Harold, the garden at
Sissinghurst was a very personal thing. It was something for
their own pleasure and enjoyment and very intimate and special
because of that.
And I think she very much wanted to garden with nature, with the
seasons, with the land around Sissinghurst.
So you will see at Sissinghurst, roses grown to, you know,
wonderful quality, but you'll also, I'm sure Alan, see a much
deeper kind of experience. And I think the best place to start
perhaps is if we go up the tower, we can get an overview of
the layout in the garden right from the top.
ALAN POWER: Oh, fantastic. Well, let's go and have a look then.
It's a never ending tower or something!
TROY SMITH: It's a long way, but it's well worth it when you get
to the top.
ALAN POWER: Troy, this is amazing. Apart from the obvious
temperature drop now that we've come out and we're more exposed
up here. It really lays the garden out before you, doesn't
it.
You can see the rearrangement of some of the planting that you've
been doing. The magnificently crisp formal hedges, I must say,
you know, I can see you smiling at that and being very pleased
with the results.
But on one side, you've got compartments of the garden that
are fully enclosed by walls, you know, a very intimate space. And
then on this side, we're looking out- formal garden and right out
into the countryside, a very, very commanding view. You know,
it's spectacular.
TROY SMITH: You never tire.
I never tire from coming up to the tower and seeing the view.
And you're right. I mean, I think Sissinghurst is more than
the garden.
The garden is beautiful, this little treasure box at the heart
of the estate, but that estate is also very important and
precious to us. So here we can look out onto the farm land and
beyond into the Chestnut Coppice Woodland, which really Vita was-
was also inspired by.
ALAN POWER: And your time at Sissinghurst Troy, you were
starting to revitalize elements of what Vita put into the garden
aren't you?
TROY SMITH: We are absolutely. I mean, the trust took on the
garden in the 1960's and it's just about trying to bring about
a celebration of their garden. And that was about beauty and
romance and all of these lovely qualities of Vita.
Furnishing the rooms that Harold created these vistas that he
struck across the garden.
ALAN POWER: Right in front of us, which you don't always
expect to find in the middle of a garden. Do you? Is, is a
cottage?
TROY SMITH: Yeah, that's the south cottage we're looking at
there and that's part of the Elizabethan mansion that was
here. That this tower was the centre of-
So part of the original scheme?
Absolutely. And, and you can't at Sissinghurst, I think,
separate the garden from the buildings. They're very integral
to it actually just dotted around the garden.
It actually means that the garden for Harold and Vita
wasn't some sort of adjunct actually beside their house
because they lived and worked and ate in all of these
different buildings in a very peculiar way.
And probably the first time if you think about this idea of a
room outside, actually Vita and Harold were doing in the 1930s
and using the garden as a place to live in, to entertain, to eat
in.
ALAN POWER: Truly as part of their home, wasn't it?
TROY SMITH: Absolutely. It's a garden to explore as Harold put
it. A series of intimacies that you just have to go on and find
for yourself.
ALAN POWER: Thank you so much Troy. That's- that's fantastic.
And I know we're going to catch up again later, but I'm going to
disappear now and just learn a little bit more about Vita and
Harold and who they really were.
I'm lucky enough to be standing in the library at Sissinghurst,
which is a very atmospheric room surrounded by books and insight
into the personalities of the people who lived here.
I'm standing with Vicky McBrien, who's the conservation assistant
at Sissinghurst. And she has the Joy of working with all of these
clues and hints to the past.
Vicky to start with. Can you tell me about Vita and Harold
and their life while they were here?
VICKY MCBRIEN: Well, basically, I mean, Vita and Harold, they
were married in 1913 and then subsequently had two children,
Benedict and Nigel. They had both been through a very
tumultuous time in their lives. So coming to Sissinghurst
allowed them really to refocus and to resettle.
And I think being here really brought them together in so many
ways, particularly the gardens actually. I think it became that
lovely joint project even though Harold was also involved in
diplomatic service and politics and all sorts of things.
ALAN POWER: Vita and Harold became fairly well known in
society and they were well connected at the time, weren't
they?
VICKY MCBRIEN: They knew everybody in politics. They knew
everybody in royalty. There was, of course, Virginia Woolf.
Virginia based her very famous book Orlando on Vita. If you've
seen Vita's writing room, you would have noticed that there's
actually a painting there. And that painting is of Violet
Trefusis.
Violet was a great love of Vita. She was the only woman that Vita
was prepared to leave Harold for even though Vita was connected
with a number of other people. But Violet was her great
passion.
Harold obviously had to be considerably more discreet and,
of course, it was illegal, but this gave Vita and Harold a
mutual understanding of each other. And if anything, because
they had that understanding, it brought them closer together.
ALAN POWER: And do you think that helped with the development
and the creation and the energy they had while they were at
Sissinghurst?
VICKY MCBRIEN: Very much so actually Alan, because they both
had things in common but also individual interests.
So Harold with his sort of more classical approach to things, he
did that beautiful structure of the garden. Whereas Vita having
that other romantic dimension to her, added that other colour and
vibrancy.
So it's having those differences in their personalities and yet
those lovely things in common and that deep respect and love
for each other, that really is a thing that's fed everything
here, not just the gardens, but also our collection.
ALAN POWER: Have you picked up hints and tips that have been
useful for Troy or little nuggets of information about
different parts of the garden at Sissinghurst that you've handed
out the window, so to speak.
VICKY MCBRIEN: Actually, yes, we're picking things up all the
time in Vita's writing room. For instance, we do have a full
press on all her gardening books and it's absolutely fascinating.
ALAN POWER: It's wonderful, isn't it? I feel surrounded by
information in here and clues to the past. It's been really
lovely to meet you, Vicky. Thank you so much. I'm off out to meet
Troy again now. And spend some time in the garden. But I'll
definitely have a few new pictures in my mind when I'm
going around the garden. Thanks to you.
VICKY MCBRIEN: Lovely. Thank you.
ALAN POWER: Hi Troy, how are you doing?
TROY SMITH: Ok.
ALAN POWER: And we're standing here now at the bottom of the
orchard. And I'm looking back towards the magnificent tower
where I had that wonderful view of the garden earlier laid out
before me.
The trees are bare and I'm standing next to a medieval moat
which really gives a strong hint of the deep history that's at
Sissinghurst. What's on your list at the moment for the team
to be doing?
TROY SMITH: Yeah. Well, we're in December now, of course. And
what we'd like to do is try and achieve all the rose pruning
before Christmas. So probably that's the key task that we're
underway with, but we're also very flexible because you have
to go with the weather, of course.
ALAN POWER: And I think speaking of the weather, we might get wet
shortly because it's starting to come in, isn't it? These parts
of the garden are actually closed at the moment, Troy, are
they.
TROY SMITH: We are, it's a fragile garden and therefore we
have to be so careful that we get the balance between allowing
lots of access for all of our visitors and sharing the work
that we're doing. But also, of course, fundamentally, look
after the garden and, and in these periods in the winter,
particularly with our heavy clay soil.
It's just very difficult to, to get people around the garden
safely without causing that damage. So, yeah, these parts
are closed, but there's lots of other things that visitors can
see.
ALAN POWER: And there's another myth, isn't there Troy, that
winters a quiet time for gardeners but it's not is it?
TROY SMITH: No, you, you say that smiling and yeah, you're
absolutely right of course.
You know, it's almost, our busiest time- at this time of
year between October really and February that the more enduring
tasks happen, the renewal work, the vital conservation work. And
it's a lot of that which we're underway with right now.
ALAN POWER: Shall we mosey around the corner and have a
look at?
TROY SMITH: Yeah, let's take you and show you what we've been
doing around here.
ALAN POWER: And what an amazing contrast to come through from
the volume of the orchard through here. And there's a
little bit of mystery in each bit that you travel through.
Here we have a medieval wall and we have Azaleas planted on the
left hand side. You know, Azaleas from a completely
different period, you know, introduced into this country.
Are there plants that run through these borders that
you're trying to stay true to the original design with?
TROY SMITH: They are, we talked about the Azaleas. Actually,
these ones here, I mostly reverted to the Azalea Mollis
Luteum, the yellow flowered one beautiful in May with its scent.
But actually, we know for a fact that Vita had all sorts of
colours here, oranges, reds, gold colour Azaleas.
And, she actually bought them from the prize fund for a piece
of work which she wrote and she, I think she's, she had £125
prize money. She went out and bought all of these Azaleas.
So, what we're trying to do is we're working with partners in
the trust and one of our neighbouring garden Sheffield
Park have some of those old varieties which actually you
can't buy anywhere in commerce. So it's so nice to be able to go
to Sheffield, get those plants micro propagated and bring them
back and reintroduce them here at Sissinghurst.
And so here, as well as the Azaleas, we've also got things
like the Blue Poppies, Meconopsis, which are a
wonderful sight in early spring.
So if we walk a bit further, I can show you what we've done in
the nuttery.
So this is the nuttery and it's, it's a very special part of
Sissinghurst Alan because it's, it's actually one of the few
bits of planting which were here when Vita and Harold arrived.
And very quickly they started to introduce plants under the
canopy of the trees here. And right through for really 40
years, it was something that Sissinghurst was very well known
for people would come from a long way to see this whole
carpet of brightly coloured Polyanthus under the canopy.
ALAN POWER: It feels very different in here Troy, doesn't
it? To the- we've walked past two compartments from the
orchard through to the borders and in here it's a very, very
different feel. Do the visitors give you that feedback as well?
TROY SMITH: I think people do respond about the feel. It's a
little bit more relaxed here and the, and the planting perhaps is
a bit more achievable.
It looks kind of casual and as if it's just happened, which of
course people can respond to.
You know, a garden needs to have pace and this part of
Sissinghurst, you just relax and then move into the next space
which we can do now!
If we walk up here, we can go into a part, which is one of my
favourite parts of Sissinghurst, which is the Spring Garden.
ALAN POWER: Yeah.
And this is completely different again, isn't it? You know, we've
left the nuttery behind, but still down the length of the
nuttery we're lucky enough at the moment in the winter that we
can see the statue in the centre.
And these lines left and right. It's a really, really rigid
avenue of trees, isn't it? Really controlled? It feels as
if it's on its best behaviour.
TROY SMITH: Yeah, it's, it is unusual for Sissinghurst but
it's very formal lines. This was more Harold's area. She really
left Harold to do the, the planting as well and he called
it my life's work. And I think you can see in spring when
you're here through March, April. May, you know, the amount
of detail he devoted to this space.
It's all planted with spring bulbs. So of every kind
Fritillaries, Tulips, Narcissus. A whole range of things that
just pop up effortlessly done... But actually, we know the work
behind that.
ALAN POWER: Nothing's effortless!
TROY SMITH: I can only imagine the amount of effort that he
must have took devising the scheme and, and keeping it
going.
ALAN POWER: Vita and Harold were well travelled, weren't they
Troy? And did- do you think their travels influence what
they were doing in the garden here?
TROY SMITH: Very much, Yeah, they- I think were inspired all
the time with the places they went and the plants that they
saw, whether it was tulips strewn on a hillside in the
Middle East somewhere. And certainly when they saw that
they wanted to replicate those ideas back at Sissinghurst.
ALAN POWER: So, what's next on the list today, Troy?
TROY SMITH: Well, I think you should go to the rose garden now
and look at the rose pruning and Helen's out, one of my gardeners
and perhaps I'll catch up with you in the White Garden.
ALAN POWER: Yeah, I'll see you in a bit then. Thanks a lot,
Troy.
So I've now moved into a different part of the garden at
Sissinghurst and I use the word different because every
compartment feels very different as I'm going through it on this
Cold December day. But to my left, there's shadows of
wonderful roses that would have looked stunning in June.
And to my right, there's this glorious shadow of a border, but
really, I'm standing here next to Helen Champion, one of the
gardeners at Sissinghurst. And I want to know a little bit more
about the historic collection of plants directly in your care at
the moment because I know that you're pruning some of them at
the minute, aren't you?
HELEN CHAMPION: Yes, I am.
ALAN POWER: And how is it going
HELEN CHAMPION: Fine... Except it's cold! but it's fine.
ALAN POWER: It is cold, isn't it? I know exactly how it feels,
standing on the ladder, pruning a rose in the middle of winter
and the wind always finds you doesn't it?
HELEN CHAMPION: And the layers of your clothing build up and up
until you're like sort of Michelin Man and can hardly move
ALAN POWER: Hunting for your secateurs in your pocket. But
Helen, can you tell me and you're obviously very close to
it? What is so special about the collection of roses here?
HELEN CHAMPION: Well, I suppose sometimes when we think about a
collection of plants, we might think about a national
collection where all the plants are gathered together of a
certain genus and just put in one place and looked after for
posterity. But this collection is quite different. It's not
like that at all.
It's created by one person and it was created by her for her
own pleasure really. And Vita was very romantic and it was the
romance of old roses that she really loved. So we have lots of
Albas, we have Bourbons, Centifolia, Damasks, Gallica,
etc. You know, she loved the fact that bourbon roses came
from an island.
She was very caught up in the romance of it. You know, the
romance of the names. Cardinal De Richelieu, Belle de Crécy,
Madame L'oreal De Barnet and the colours as well. That reminded
her of the carpets that she saw when she travelled in Persia.
And she particularly liked Tuscany Superb, this very deep
dark red.
And she wrote the velvet rose, what a combination of words. And
of course, then there was the scent, this heady powerful scent
that old roses give out. And when she came to Sissinghurst,
she finally had the space to indulge in her passion and she
liked to plant very profusely, very lavishly.
And so the rose garden is full of these roses and other
herbaceous plants like Peonies, Irises, Eremurus, etc. And she
said, oh, I'm drunk on roses. And I think that's a great
expression and I love to think that people can still come here
and see the roses that Vita planted and get drunk on roses a
little bit themselves.
ALAN POWER: And tell me, do you, are you close to finishing the
collection, having the collection as intact as you'd
like it or have you got years of work ahead of you to carry on
building it?
HELEN CHAMPION: We were fortunate in that Vita's first
head gardener, Jack Vass had made a list of all the roses
that had been growing in the garden in 1953. So we're now at
about 300 roses and I think we are nearly there.
ALAN POWER: That's remarkable, isn't it?
HELEN CHAMPION: Yeah, and exciting as well to have all
these new, roses in the garden. You know, we've got more mosses
Général Kléber. We've got another Bourbon, Souvenir de la
Malmaison.
Just loads. And that's just to mention, you know, two or three.
But yes, they're all old roses.
ALAN POWER: So we're, we're in December now and I walked past
you earlier. You were in the middle of pruning one of the
roses at the bottom of the tower.
HELEN CHAMPION: Once we've done all the pruning on the walls, we
all come into the rose garden. It's a really nice combination
of sort of technical skills where you're, you're doing the
method of pruning, you know, taking out dead disease, damaged
wood to increase health and you're taking out some old stems
to increase vigor and trying to get a lovely shape.
But there's also the creative side of it. You know, we do this
special training method and of course, you're thinking about
how to train the rose so that it looks lovely, aesthetically,
beautiful and will flower well. So there's that nice
combination.
ALAN POWER: That's great. And you, you say we all, yeah, I, I
had it in my head that maybe you do all of this all on your own.
Presumably you've got lots of volunteers and help from staff
and?
HELEN CHAMPION: The volunteers at Sissinghurst are really
fantastic and crucial to the sort of smooth running of the
place. And we have about 370 that help overall, but we have
30 that help in the garden. And in the summer we have two
special groups that come in and they're called the Dead Headers.
And then they start at the top of the rose garden and they sort
of woosh their way all the way down, dead heading as they go.
And when they finished the rose garden looks just totally
amazing again. You know, it's really restored to its pristine
state.
ALAN POWER: Helen, thanks a million. I need to go and find
Troy in the White Garden. There are so many routes through the
garden here, which is the best one for me to take?
HELEN CHAMPION: Well, we're in the Roundel now. So I would
advise just going straight ahead. Look ahead and you'll see
actually the vase in the White Garden, which is a brilliant
viewpoint. And I think one of Harold's best design elements in
this garden, this amazing view from the top of lime walk all
the way through to the White Garden. So go and enjoy it.
ALAN POWER: Thanks a million, cheers Helen.
HELEN CHAMPION: Bye.
ALAN POWER: Hi, Troy. How are you doing? Helen said, I'd find
you over here coming into the White Garden again. You know, I
love the brick work here. It gives a great sense of enclosure
in the White Garden.
And although we're almost in the depths of winter now, I can
almost feel the luxurious floral display that comes in this
garden. But for Vita, it was much more about the white
flowers themselves, wasn't it in this place? How they showed
themselves in the evening and at twilight.
TROY SMITH: Yeah well, the White Garden is positioned as you can
see here next to what we call the priest's house. And this is
where Vita and Harold would eat. So, you know, they slept in one
place and worked in another. This is the house that they had
the kitchen and that they would eat.
And so on an evening, they would spill out of the door there
that, that we can see coming out from the side of the, of the
house into that lovely seating area and of course, sit there
long into the evening. And so it seemed actually very sensible
therefore to have a garden which really illuminated itself
without artificial lighting at the end of the day.
ALAN POWER: And there are certain varieties and there's,
you know, Phlox is one that really stands out in my head
because they almost glow, glow in the dark, don't they?
TROY SMITH: It's funny you should say that just down the
flight of steps there, which we've recently restored Vita had
about as a little Phlox garden just because of the evening
light that used to capture.
ALAN POWER: And they do. You know, it's something that goes
right back to when I was at Mount Stewart, we had a Phlox
there that you could almost see your way home with it. It was
really, really, really beautiful, but I honestly can't
think of a better place to kind of end our program today.
I've learned so much meeting you and your team and actually, I
feel as if I've got to know Vita and Harold a little bit better
today than the heart and soul they put into this place. But
what's really come out for me, Troy is talking to you and your
team, the fact that your heart and soul is in it as well.
TROY SMITH: It's lovely to hear that Alan because I think what
we really try and strive for here is the sense that when
everybody comes, every visitor, they feel that spirit, they
sense Harold and Vita.
ALAN POWER: I just want to say thanks for today. Thanks for
showing me around and letting me borrow your team for a while.
TROY SMITH: It's great to see you here again.
ALAN POWER: If you've enjoyed this podcast, you can find more
of them by searching for National Trust Gardens,
subscribe on itunes or follow us on your favorite podcast app.
We'd love to know what you think of this series to help us make
more of them in the future. So please do leave us a review on
itunes as well as filling out our survey which you'll find in
the program description.
This may well be the last full program in this series, but
we'll be giving you some more little extras from Sissinghurst
throughout the month such as how you can use no dig gardening if
you've also got difficult clay soil and a little extra on the
magic of meadows. But thanks for listening and hope you can join
me again soon.
BETTANY HUGHES: I'm Bettany Hughes. I've been visiting
National Trust Properties all my life. But in this series of
podcasts, I'm going beyond the delights of tees and topiary to
reveal the surprising European roots of some of the most
splendid sites in England.
You can subscribe to my series by searching for Bettany
Hughes's 10 places Europe and us, on your podcast app.