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Sissinghurst Castle - Part Five

© Kirk Johnson

For 6 years, this garden was Sissinghurst's rose garden, and then in 1937, the former kitchen garden was planted as a rose garden and most of the roses at the south end of the garden were moved to the new rose garden. The new rose garden mainly featured shrub roses, and the tea roses the north end of the garden remained in their small beds. The large beds at the south end of the garden were planted with masses of delphiniums.

During the second world war, Vita mainly focused on maintaining Sissinghurst's hedges, and flower beds were either neglected or ripped out so that vegetables could be planted instead. After the war, much effort was put into restoring the gardens, and the garden next to the Priest's House was one of the last areas to be tackled. The delphinium beds had suffered badly from neglect; Vita and Harold discussed the possibility of replanting them, but decided instead to replant the entire garden with a color scheme of silver and white.

The new white garden was designed to be at its most beautiful during the month of July. This is characteristic of the Nicolson's attitude towards garden design. Sissinghurst's lime walk and nuttery were designed to peak during the spring, the rose garden was mainly planted with old roses that bloom during the month of June, and the cottage garden is filled with blooms in late summer, so a July garden made perfect sense. In a letter that Harol wrote to Vita in 1949, he said that he was not happy with the garden next to the Priest's House; he thought that the garden had "such a lovely shape and we see so much of it that it really ought to be turned into a July garden", when the earlier blooming parts of the garden had declined. He felt that they removed the delphiniums, that they would "find the grey and white garden to be very beautiful". He especially wanted "The garden as a whole to be superb in 1951 for the British Fair or Festival, with heaps of overseas visitors".

The Priest's House garden was always used as an outdoor dining room, this is why the white garden was designed to be at its most beautiful in the evenings. In January of 1950, Vita wrote that she could "not help hoping that the great ghostly barn owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer, in the twilight, the pale garden that I am now planting under the first flakes of snow.