Sissinghurst Castle - Part Three

During the two years that the tower, South Cottage, and Priest's House were being restored, the Nicolsons had kept their earlier home, Long Barn, but in April of 1932, Vita rented out Long Barn and Sissinghurst Castle became their home. In 1935, the entry range's stables were converted into what the Nicolson's called their "Big Room" (it is now called the Library). Harold was never happy with the proportions of this room, he felt that it would "always have about it a feeling of a hospital ward in some Turkish barrack". Vita did her best to try to compensate for the room's long, narrow proportions by arranging furniture but on the 20th of July she wrote to Harold saying that "the big room is a failure. Try as I might, I cannot get it to come together." The Big Room was never embraced as a family room, but when Vita bought a television in 1939, she installed it in the big room, so that the family and their servants could watch it after dinner.

While the big room did get some use when entertaining guests or watching television, the family mainly lived separate lives, with Harold in the South Cottage, Vita in her tower, and their sons, Ben and Nigel, in the Priest's House when home from school. Harold was usually only at Sissinghurst on weekends, spending the rest of the week in London. Vita's typical weekday routine was to rise at 8AM and look over the garden as she walked to the Priest's house for breakfast (Vita didn't cook, the Nicolson's always employed a cook). Vita would usually devote her mornings to writing and only began her "serious gardening" in the late afternoon, after the gardeners were done for the day (the Nicolsons employed 3 gardeners and a head gardener). After she was done with her gardening, Vita would bathe and change for dinner, then have drinks at the South Cottage before walking over the the Priest's House for dinner.

I can't think of any British garden that is similar to Sissinghurst, even though it is one of the most influential gardens of the twentieth century. Many gardens have plantings inspired by Sissinghurst, but the British climate isn't well suited to the way that the Nicolson's lived in their garden. The only garden that really reminds me of Sissinghurst is the sixteenth century garden of the Villa Lante, in Bagnia, Italy. Unlike other

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