SISSINGHURST The Dream Garden. A book review

While visiting gardens has become more difficult in the last year and travel to far-off lands out of the question there is still one thing that gardeners can do and that is read about gardens. Here is a book that has me dreaming about a return visit to the gardens at Sissinghurst, armed with even more knowledge about that garden and its makers.

 Sissinghurst is surely one of the gardens that is top of the list when visiting gardens in England. The first time I visited I looked at it only as a garden, wowed by the garden rooms, those views from the Tower, the White Garden and a very brief introduction to Vita Sackville West and her husband Harold Nicolson, the makers of the garden. Before leaving I purchased the National Trust book Sissinghurst. Portrait of a Garden so I could learn a little more. Since then I have purchased several books written by both garden writers and family. I was captured by this couple, their unusual marriage but mostly how they, with different ideas about how to garden managed to pull off such a wondrous place. My feeling is that you will never truly understand this garden unless you know something of its history, even though that history is less than 100 years.

At the very start Richardson says "I am not going to make any excuses for the wilful intermixing, in this book, of sturdy horticultural description with biographical detail and speculation regarding Harold and Vita's intellectual and aesthetic motivations." In this respect the book offers a newer look at the garden and its makers.

After a short introduction to the garden makers and how they came to purchase Sissinghurst, you  begin to understand why this garden is so important. Each chapter takes you on a walking tour of the garden. moving from one garden to another learning, if things have changed, how it was in Vita and Harold's time, what happened after their death when it became part of the National Trust. It begins in the entry garden where, like the visitors in Vita's day, you now pay your 'shilling' to enter.

"And then the visitor gains a first proper glimpse of the tower directly ahead, framed by Sissinghurst's gateway. It is a a transfixing moment, especially as the tower has not loomed particularly large until now. "

If you love roses then you will enjoy the chapter on the large collection of roses in the Rose garden before moving to the lime walk and a complete change in character. The one area of the garden which Harold not only designed but also planted. The walk takes you through the nuttery, the herb garden (about as far away from the kitchen as you could get) the orchard to the famous White Garden, and finally to the new Delos Garden. There is a short chapter on the new Delos Garden which was the name Vita gave to the Mediterranean garden she tried unsuccessfully to create at Sissinghurst. Dan Pearson was the designer given the task of designing and implementing the garden in the rather cold and inhospitable winter climate. I wonder if Vita would have been happy. The garden has seen many changes since taken over by the Trust and Tim Richardson admits he thought he knew the garden well until he undertook this project. 

Whether you have the chance to visit the garden or only in the pages of this book you will be sure to leave with a sense of what makes the garden so important and visited by thousands from all over the world every year.

I was offered this book to review and have really enjoyed pleasant days of reading during these Covid times. 

Sissinghurst The dream garden by Tim Richardson, foreword by Dan Pearson, Photographs by Jason Ingram. published by Frances Lincoln.