Sissinghurst Castle - Part Seven

The photo above shows the small beds, edged with boxwood, in the northern half of Sissinghurst's White Garden. This photograph was taken by Dave Parker and may not be reproduced in any way without his permission; his website features many beautiful photographs of Sissinghurst Castle.

Ever since Vita began to write in her gardening column about her planned white garden, people have been speculating about what inspired her to create this garden. Gertrude Jekyll is an obvious choice because she strongly promoted single color gardens, but while Miss Jekyll created and created blue gardens and gold gardens, she doesn't seem to have thought about white gardens. This may have been because Miss Jekyll didn't consider white to be a color, or she may have associated white with death. In Victorian England, white was considered appropriate for virgins, but it also reminded people of death. In many cultures, white is the color of death, even more than black is. At the turn of the twentieth century, when Miss Jekyll was writing about gardens, an all white garden could be considered shocking - not quite nice.

Vita began her white garden in 1950, so modern architecture is a possible source of inspiration. By the middle of the twentieth century, people had become used the stark white exteriors and interiors of architects such as Mies van der Rohe, but the modernist movement had very little impact on British gardens and Vita always wanted Sissinghurst to be a refuge from the modern world. Vita's taste in interior design ran towards old tapestries and seventeenth century furniture, so it is unlikely that her white garden was strongly influenced by the all white interiors of modern architecture.

All white interiors were much more common than white gardens during the 1930s and 1940s but there were some British gardens that Vita may have drawn inspiration from. Hidcote had a small white garden that was originally called a Phlox Garden, but Vita and Harold never mentioned it in their public writings or their private letters, so it probably wasn't a strong influence. The white border at Crathes Castle also predates Sissinghurst's white garden, but there is no evidence that Harold or Vita were aware of its existence.