{"id":7744,"date":"2026-09-21T12:24:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T02:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7744"},"modified":"2026-09-21T12:24:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T02:24:06","slug":"vita-sackville-wests-sissinghurst-by-vita-sackville-west-and-saran-raven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7744","title":{"rendered":"VITA SACKVILLE-WEST’S SISSINGHURST by Vita Sackville-West and Saran Raven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>(Crocus)…recall those miniature works of art created by the great Russian artificer Faberge in the luxurious days when the very rich could afford such extravagances… One wants to see them close to the eye, fully to appreciate the pencilling on the outside of the petals; it seems to have been drawn with a fine brush, perhaps wielded by some sure-handed Chinese calligrapher, feathering them in bronze or lilac.<\/em><\/p>\n

Spring in our Central Victorian garden is almost a frenzy because everything happens all at the same time, with feverish haste, plants erupting into bud and bloom and some of them, already setting seed. I waited months for the crocus – ‘Pickwick’ and ‘King of the Stripes’ – to flower, and they were a joy, utterly exquisite, but after a couple of weeks, they’ve gone and I have two pots of leaves which I must leave to die off and wither away so that I can lift the bulbs for next year’s brief show. The plum blossom, hardenbergia (‘Happy Wanderer’) and tulips have all ‘gone over’ (apparently this is what English gardeners call it) and the weeds and the congested succulents I’ve been trying to thin out are festering in big piles. Grass is growing in the gravel courtyard and between the paving stones; parrots and cockatoos are ravaging the gums trees for blossom, scattering leaves and twigs everywhere I’ve swept. By the end of\u00a0 a month, it will be dry and browning off. My dreamy vision of roses and flowering perennials will hit reality and I’ll be out there in the evenings watering to keep my plants alive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So how wonderful, reading Vita Sackville-Wests’s Sissinghurst: The Making of a Garden<\/em>, to enter the fantasy of a glorious garden in more well-mannered climate, with an Elizabethan tower, stone and old brick ruins, ancient walls, pillars and archways and urns, paved paths, courtyards, orchards, meadows and with every divine, fragrant, romantic plant and flower you can think of in drifts and clumps and swathes and swags…and, it has to be said, with a team of gardeners to keep it all going.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sissinghurst is supreme in the English pantheon of gardens, and its creator Vita Sackville-West is a goddess, or perhaps a saint. St Vita of Sissinghurst? She is certainly the patron saint of the one-colour garden, and her famous White Garden has sparked innumerable pale imitations. Caught up in my current gardening craze, this book was the perfect bedtime reading. Though I’ve seen lots of pictures and video footage of Sissinghurst, reading about its actual planning and construction was unexpectedly interesting. Though they collaborated, it turns out that Vita’s husband, Harold Nicolson, was mostly responsible for the structure and Vita handled the planting schemes. She loved full, voluptuous, lavish planting – ‘cram’ was apparently her advice to novices and experts alike –\u00a0 and bought plants and trees by the hundred. Though she did have a team of gardeners, she also dirtied her own hands, and her gardening ‘uniform’ of silk shirt, breeches and long lace-up boots looks both posh and eccentric.<\/p>\n

From 1946 to 1957, she wrote a weekly gardening column for the Observer<\/em> newspaper and Sarah Raven, who is married to Vita and Harold’s grandson, the writer Adam Nicolson, has interwoven her text with Vita’s own words. It’s a lovely combination. Vita writes so lyrically that I don’t actually care if I have no idea what she’s writing about. Fritillaries? Aconites? Bouvardias and auricula? The names are like charms, the descriptions like dreams. Soothing and delightful reading.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Crocus)…recall those miniature works of art created by the great Russian artificer Faberge in the luxurious days when the very rich could afford such extravagances… One wants to see them close to the eye, fully to appreciate the pencilling on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7750,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744\/revisions\/7750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}