In a previous article, I mentioned that Vita's first thoughts about creating a white garden were focused on the area where the Lion Pond had been. The Lion Pond was created in 1930; the same year that the Nicolson's bought Sissinghurst. It was the only water feature that they ever created within the garden, but it always leaked, so in 1939 it was drained and transformed into the sunken garden. The photo below shows the same area as the photograph above. You can see the paved walk between the dwarf clipped hedges. The sunken garden is on the right side of the path, the opening in the wall is where one of the windows of the Tudor manor house once was.
That window opening is a reminder that this was once the cour d' honneur of the Tudor manorhouse and was surrounded by the most important rooms; the grandest of these being a long gallery that was decorated with delicately painted grotesques. The South Cottage is the only surviving part of these rooms; it marks the south-eastern corner of the ,i>cour d' honneur. In the photo of the orchard, you can see the South Cottage on the right. Harold and Vita used the Yew Walk (shown at the bottom of that photograph) as the passage between their bedroom in the South Cottage and their dining room in the Priests House (if you look on the right side of the photo of the White Garden, you will see the Yew Walk).
The Yew Walk divides the area once occupied by the cour d' honneur in half. It is questionable whether that was the best design decision, since it causes the Tower Lawn to be long and narrow, but the shape does emphasize the axis that connects the White Garden with the Rose Garden. I probably would have wanted to retain the original proportions of the cour d' honneur, but I am not convinced that the Nicholson's solution isn't just as good.
It has often been said that every garden needs an open area - a breathing space that is sometimes called the garden's "lungs"; this is the function that the Tower Lawn serves. It is a difficult lesson for many of us to accept; we want every part of our garden to be filled with interesting details, but it is better to have a simple, open area from which visitors can appreciate the principle lines of a garden. I hope that I have managed to convince you that the Tower Lawn is one of the most important parts of Sissinghurst's garden, but I have barely convinced myself of that. I am still absorbing Sissinghurst's lessons.
