Sissinghurst

by Vita Sackville-West

  You’ll see this clearly in the photographs of both Long Barn and Sissinghurst from the 1930s until the 1960s, a great profusion, a shagginess, a relaxedness, a softness to almost every hard surface, path, wall or step, as well as all the borders filled to overbrimming. As Anne Scott-James puts it, ‘She planned for rich planting and thick underplanting … the whole garden to be furnished with a lavish hand.’ Lavish is only partly it – it’s also about embroidery and lace and nearly an old-ladyish sort of delicacy.

  Go for it, overwhelm with plants, was a keystone of Vita’s Sissinghurst. Don’t plant just one of something – seven or nine, or even six hundred would be better if you can find the money and the room. She liked exaggeration: ‘big groups, big masses; I am sure that it is more effective to plant 12 tulips together than to split them into 2 groups of 6’.

  Pam and Sybille, in their continuing development of the garden in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, took this one step further. They would create a strong group of five or seven of one plant on one side of the path and then repeat it in a lesser group on the other. What Vita and then the gardeners were avoiding was the staccato look of dotting singly or in tiny groups, which gave a fussy feel. ‘The more I see of other people’s gardens the more convinced do I become of the value of good grouping and shapely training,’ she declared in In Your Garden Again. ‘These remarks must necessarily apply most forcibly to gardens of a certain size, where sufficient space is available for large clumps or for large specimens of individual plants, but even in a small garden the spotty effect can be avoided by massing instead of dotting plants here and there.’

  COVER THE WALLS

  I think Sissinghurst – more than any garden I have seen – uses the vertical as much as the horizontal, every surface brimming over. This is obviously due partly to the number of walls they inherited from the ruined Elizabethan palace. As Vita said very early on, in a letter to Harold in 1930, ‘I see that we are going to have heaps of wall space for climbing things.’ But Vita really went for it, planting the soft-coloured terracotta with hundreds of climbers: roses, clematis, hydrangeas, wisterias. She wanted ‘a tumble of roses and honeysuckle, figs and vines. It was a romantic place, and, within the austerity of Harold Nicolson’s straight lines, must be romantically treated.’

  Looking from the Tower to the climber-swagged front range and the table with the bowl for the shilling entrance fee.

  As she says, ‘Climbers are among the most useful plants in any garden. They take up little ground space, and they can be employed for many purposes: to clothe a boring fence, to scramble over a dead tree, to frame an archway, to drape a wall, to disguise a shed, or to climb lightly into a pergola. They demand comparatively little attention, once they have taken hold of their support, maybe a yearly pruning or a kindly rescue if they have come adrift in a gale’. This theme has been built on by the gardeners at Sissinghurst ever since.

  She’d put lots of climbers and wall shrubs against the house at Long Barn, and wanted even more here. She admitted she had more walls to cover than most of us, but ‘any garden, however small, has a house in it, and that house has walls. This is a very important fact to be remembered. Often I hear people say, “How lucky you are to have these old walls; you can grow anything against them,” and then, when I point out that every house means at least four walls – north, south, east, and west – they say, “I never thought of that.” Against the north and west sides you can grow magnolias or camellias; on the east side, which catches the morning sun, you can grow practically any of the hardy shrubs or climbers, from the beautiful ornamental quinces, commonly, though incorrectly, called Japonicas (the right name is Cydonia, or even more correctly, Chaenomeles), to the more robust varieties of Ceanothus, powdery-blue, or a blue fringing on purple. On the south side the choice is even larger – a vine, for instance, will soon cover a wide, high space, and in a reasonable summer will ripen its bunches of small, sweet grapes (I recommend Royal Muscadine, if you can get it); or, if you want a purely decorative effect, the fast-growing Solanum crispum, which is a potato though you might not think it, will reach to the eaves of the house and will flower in deep mauve for at least two months in early summer.’

  The appearance of structural woody climbers – figs, wisterias and osmanthus, pruned flat against the shelter of the red brick and around the windows – is fundamental to the character of Sissinghurst, but Vita did not just leave it at this. She had lots of other things, and a particular passion for climbing and rambler roses, but all these were given only the lightest prune. This was partly because she hated to destroy the bird’s nests, which were almost always in them, but partly because she loved the swathes. Harold complained in a letter: ‘I suppose one must take for granted this birds’-nest passion … I will have to resign myself to my home being an omelet most of the spring and a guano dump the rest of the time.’ She liked the wayward natural growth of yews, not wanting them tightly clipped. She loved shrub roses billowing or even tangling over your head; tall roses – like ‘Nevada’ – tower up right at the edge of the path, columns of shrubs almost obscuring them. Roses were to her a ‘wildly blossoming shrub’ and that’s how they should be grown.

  SPRING

  For spring Vita planted azara and osmanthus on west-facing walls, their scent in April one of the characteristic smells of the Sissinghurst garden and deliciously strong on a warm day.

  Actinidia kolomikta on the west side of the Powys wall.

  For its elegant Neapolitan ice-cream, triple-coloured leaves she added actinidia, tucked in a sheltered west-facing corner on the south range, below one of our bedroom windows. It’s a slow grower, but an exotic thing: ‘If you want something which will never exceed 8 to 10 feet let me recommend Actinidia Kolomikta as a plant to set against a wall facing east or west. The small white flowers are insignificant and may be disregarded; the beauty lies in the leaves, which are triple-coloured, green and pink and white, so gay and decorative and unusual as to provoke friends and visitors into asking what it is.’

  Akebia is another one, a quick-growing, rampant climber with the delicious and unusual smell of an old-fashioned boiled sweet. I remember seeing this on the main house at Glyndebourne, drawn by its smell that was being thrown twenty yards away. I’d never seen it before, but immediately planted it in my own garden and now – in spring – its scent adds to the medley drifting in through the windows on a warmish day.

  As Vita says, ‘[Akebias] are not often seen, but they should be. They are strong growers, semi-evergreen, with shamrock-like leaves and curiously coloured flowers. The flowers of A. trifoliata are brown, and the flowers of A. quinata are of a dusty violet, which might best be described by that neglected adjective, gridelin. Both kinds are hardy, and in a mild climate or after a hot sunny summer will produce fruits the size of a duck’s egg, if you will imagine a duck’s egg in plum-colour, with a plum’s beautiful bloom before it has got rubbed off in the marketing. These fruits have the advantage that their seeds will germinate 100 per cent if you sow them in a pot; at any rate, that has been my experience.’ On Vita’s advice, my mother still has an Akebia quinata with an Actinidia kolomikta growing up a wall next to a Judas tree.

  Vita particularly relished the jewel-like flowers of the ornamental quince, and this was one of the first plants she put in as soon as the restoration work was completed on the Big Room walls. I like looking at that plant, the same one that was there seventy years ago and still looking strong and healthy. In In Your Garden Again, Vita notes in October 1951:

  ‘The ornamental quinces should not be forgotten. They may take a little while to get going, but, once they have made a start, they are there for ever, increasing in size and luxuriance from year to year. They need little attention, and will grow almost anywhere, in sun or shade. Although they are usually seen trained against a wall, notably on old farmhouses and cottages, it is not necessary to give them this protection, for they will do equally well grown as loose bushes in the open or in a border, and, indeed, it see
ms to me that their beauty is enhanced by this liberty offered to their arching sprays. Their fruits, which in autumn are as handsome as their flowers, make excellent jelly; in fact, there is everything to be said in favour of this well-mannered, easy-going, obliging and pleasantly old-fashioned plant …

  ‘There are many varieties. There is the old red one, C[ydonia] lagenaria, hard to surpass in richness of colour, beautiful against a grey wall or a whitewashed wall, horrible against modern red brick. There is C. nivalis, pure white, safely lovely against any background. There is C. Moerloosei, or the Apple-blossom quince, whose name is enough to suggest its shell-pink colouring. There is Knaphill Scarlet, not scarlet at all but coral-red; it goes on flowering at odd moments throughout the summer long after its true flowering season is done. There is C. cathayensis, with small flowers succeeded by the biggest green fruits you ever saw – a sight in themselves.’

  Beside the japonica Vita planted evergreen myrtle, its leaves so deliciously fragrant when crushed and its black berries so tangy it is not surprising that they are used as flavouring – like juniper’s – with meat. Vita could crumple up a leaf when going in and out of the Big Room and that is why it’s planted there:

  ‘I have a myrtle growing on a wall. It is only the common myrtle, Myrtus communis, but I think you would have to travel far afield to find a lovelier shrub for July and August flowering. The small, pointed, dark-green leaves are smothered at this time of year by a mass of white flowers with quivering centres of the palest green-yellow, so delicate in their white and gold that it appears as though a cloud of butterflies had alighted on the dark shrub.

  ‘The myrtle is a plant full of romantic associations in mythology and poetry, the sacred emblem of Venus and of love, though why Milton called it brown I never could understand, unless he was referring to the fact that the leaves, which are by way of being evergreen, do turn brown in frosty weather or under a cold wind. Even if it gets cut down in winter there is nothing to worry about, for it springs up again, at any rate in the South of England. In the north it might be grateful for a covering of ashes or fir branches over the roots. It strikes very easily from cuttings, and a plant in a pot is a pretty thing to possess, especially if it can be stood near the house-door, where the aromatic leaves may be pinched as you go in and out. In very mild counties, such as Cornwall, it should not require the protection of a wall, but may be grown as a bush or small tree in the open, or even, which I think should be most charming of all, into a small grove suggestive of Greece and her nymphs.

  ‘The flowers are followed by little inky berries, which in their turn are quite decorative, and would probably grow if you sowed a handful of them.’ Like the japonica, this is the same plant put in by Vita in the early 1930s, and I always do as she says, pinching the leaves as I pass.

  SUMMER

  For summer wall shrubs and climbers, Vita’s favourites were of course the roses. There were so many outstanding ones to choose from and they fitted perfectly – if pruned quite loosely – with her idea of embroidered exuberance, wands arching overhead as well as looping up and over all her walls. ‘How wide is the scope, whether we plant against a wall, or over a bank, or up a pillar, or even an archway, or in that most graceful fashion of sending the long strands up into an old tree, there to soar and dangle, loose and untrammelled,’ she mused.

  Roses tumbling off the top of a wall, only lightly pruned.

  VITA’S FAVOURITES

  ‘Albertine’

  This is a lovely soft pink rose which Vita mentions as rare among the rambling wichuraianas, in that it’s not prone to mildew even when trained on a wall. ‘Albertine’ is planted to the right of the Tower steps, where it merges with ‘Paul’s Lemon Pillar’, both planted by Vita in the 1930s. There used to be two or three ‘Albertines’ in the Lower Courtyard, but – a slightly tender rose – all but one were lost in the severe winter of 1962/3.

  ‘Albertine’ roses and ‘Paul’s Lemon Pillar’ with potted plants.

  ‘Allen Chandler’

  This is the rose planted on the entrance arch in the Top Courtyard, planted by Vita in the 30s – ‘A magnificent red, only semi-double, which carries some bloom all through the summer. Not, I think, a rose for a house of new brick, but superb on grey stone, or on white-wash, or indeed any colour-wash.’

  ‘Lawrence Johnstone’

  ‘A splendid very deep yellow,’ Vita enthuses, ‘better than the very best butter, and so vigorous as to cover 12 ft. of wall within two seasons. It does not seem to be nearly so well known as it ought to be, even under its old name Hidcote Yellow, although it dates back to 1925 and received an Award of Merit from the R.H.S. in 1948. The bud, of a beautifully pointed shape, opens into a loose, nearly-single flower which does not lose its colour up to the very moment when it drops. Eventually it will attain a height of 50 ft., but if you cannot afford the space for so rampant a grower, you have a sister seedling in Le Rêve, indistinguishable as to flower and leaf, but more restrained as to growth. It must, however, be said that the first explosion of bloom is not usually succeeded by many subsequent flowers.’ This was planted on the South Cottage and is still there.

  ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’

  This was the first rose planted by Vita at Sissinghurst in 1930, before the deeds were even signed, and it quickly covered most of the south face of the South Cottage and in Vita and Harold’s day was left to ‘render invisible’ most of the front of the house and trained around her bedroom window to pour scent into the house for months at a stretch. It is still there, and now has a huge trunk wider than my husband’s thigh.

  Rosa ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’ climbing all over South Cottage.

  ‘If you want a white rose, flushed pink, very vigorous and seldom without flowers,’ she writes, ‘try Mme Alfred Carrière. Smaller than Paul’s rose [see here], and with no pretensions to a marmoreal shape, Madame Alfred has the advantage of a sweet, true-rose scent, and will grow to the eaves of any reasonably proportioned house. It’s best on a sunny wall but tolerant of a west or even a north aspect. I should like to see every Airey house [a prefabricated house built after the Second World War] in this country rendered invisible behind this curtain of white and green.’

  ‘Mermaid’

  ‘Perhaps too well known to be mentioned, but should never be forgotten, partly for the sake of the pale-yellow flowers, opening flat and single, and partly because of the late flowering season, which begins after most other climbers are past their best. I must add that Mermaid should be regarded with caution by dwellers in cold districts.’ This turned out to be all too true at Sissinghurst, where Vita planted it on the east-facing wall of the front range. In the severe winter of 1985 it was cut right to the ground and had to be removed. It has been replanted in the Top Courtyard on the east-facing wall to the left of the arch.

  Rosa mulliganii on the rose frame in the White Garden, designed by Nigel using paperclips on his desk.

  Mulliganii

  This is the rose planted at the centre of the White Garden, long thought to be the rose longicuspis. There used to be four, planted to grow up the central path lined with almond trees, but the rose is so rampant, the almonds were starved of light and died. Three of the mulliganii were then removed and the remaining one trained over the central arbour of the White Garden in the 1970s. This is now struggling and recently a new one has been planted to gradually take its place.

  ‘New Dawn’

  This is grown against the wall of the Tower Lawn, where it is only lightly pruned. Its stiffer branches and non-rampant growth mean that its most vigorous stems need only shortening slightly. ‘Among other wichuraianas, of a stiffer character than the ramblers, the New Dawn is to my mind one of the best, very free-flowering throughout the summer, of a delicate but definite rose-pink.’

  ‘Paul’s Lemon Pillar’

  This was planted in two places by Vita at Sissinghurst, against the south-facing wall of the Rose Garden next to the gate into the Top Courtyard, and towards
the southwest corner of the Tower Lawn.

  ‘Another favourite white rose of mine,’ says Vita, ‘is Paul’s Lemon Pillar. It should not be called white. A painter might see it as greenish, suffused with sulphur-yellow, and its great merit lies not only in the vigour of its growth and wealth of flowering, but also in the perfection of its form. The shapeliness of each bud has a sculptural quality which suggests curled shavings of marble, if one may imagine marble made of the softest ivory suede. The full-grown flower is scarcely less beautiful; and when the first explosion of bloom is over, a carpet of thick white petals covers the ground, so dense as to look as though it had been deliberately laid … One of the most perfectly shaped roses I know, and of so subtle a colour that one does not know whether to call it ivory or sulphur or iceberg green.’

  ‘Paul’s Lemon Pillar’ merging with ‘Albertine’ roses on the Lower Courtyard wall.

  PRUNING THE CLIMBING ROSES

  Vita liked her climbing roses only lightly pruned, as noted earlier. She loved to see their great tresses climbing up into trees, providing shaggy moustaches and eyebrows to the buildings. They were given only a scant tidy-up in the winter, the dead wood removed, the most rampant growth neatened, but they were never hard shorn. What you got with this pattern of pruning was a great luxuriance of tangled growth each summer, the roses standing out a good two feet from the walls in places, but you got fewer flowers than if they had been pruned more systematically.

  Rosa mulliganii pruned hard on its frame in the White Garden.

  The gardeners’ policy since Pam and Sybille’s time is to take the roses back to a tight frame. The climbing-rose pruning season at Sissinghurst now starts in November. First, the gardeners cut off most of that year’s growth. This keeps the framework clear and prevents the plant from becoming too woody. Next, large woody stems are taken out – almost to the base – to encourage new shoots. These will flower the following year. The remaining branches are reattached to the wall, stem by stem, starting from the middle of the plant, working outwards, with the pruned tip of each branch bent down and attached to the branch below. That’s the key thing – bending each stem down.