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Sissinghurst Castle - Part Ten

© Kirk Johnson

The orchard's fruit trees may have been planted during the first half of the nineteenth century, when Sissinghurst was being used as a poorhouse, so they were already ancient when the Nicolson's bought the property in 1930. When I look at photographs that were taken in the early 1930's, I can understand why the Nicolson's loved their orchard. The orchard that you see at the top of this page barely resembles the orchard that they knew. In 1987, a great storm blew down most of the fruit trees which hadn't already died of old age, and it has been decided that it will be best to not replace all of the trees at once, to avoid the risk of having all of the trees dying of old age at the same time, so it will be decades before the orchard is the romantic feature that it once was.

When you look at the photograph at the top of this article, you should picture the orchard as Harold and Vita knew it, with roses climbing into old apple trees; it was as much of a rose garden as it was an orchard. While the effect was very romantic, the roses probably hastened the death of the old trees, and the roses were impossible to prune, so the roses didn't live as long as they could have.

It is surprising that the fruit trees lived as long as they did, because the orchard's water table is very high. There has been more than one attempt to improve the drainage by laying drainpipes, but without much success. Every time that the gardeners would dig a hole, it would fill with water. The trees that have been chosen to replace those that were lost in the storm are mainly apples and pears; many of these are planted on mounds of soil, this eliminates the need to dig among the foundations of the Medieval and Tudor manorhouses, and it gives the trees a slightly deeper area of well drained soil.

The photo above shows some of the masses of narcissus that the Nicolsons planted under the orchard's trees. With the loss of so many trees, the orchard has become quite sunny, and some people feel that there are almost too many daffodil blooms and that the beauty of the individual blooms has been lost; but as the new trees grow, the bulbs will flower less profusely.

The photo above shows the orchard in the spring with people walking along the eastern branch of the moat towards a gazebo with white walls and a steep roof. This is a proper gazebo, not just a summerhouse, since it is designed to gaze out over the moat towards the fields beyond. It was constructed after Harold's death as a memorial to him, and as a writing room for Harold and Vita's son Nigel, who lived at Sissinghurst after his parent's death. The photo below shows the gazebo as viewed from across the moat. If you look at the end of the moat, you can see the roofs of the old oast houses, which were used for drying hops. The tall roof of the gazebo really only makes sense from this view; from most views, the roof looks absurdly tall.