Sissinghurst Castle - Part Fourteen

As you can see in the photo, the Rondel doesn't totally screen views into the Rose Garden. There are low hedges between the old doorway and the Rondel which allow a fairly broad view into the garden. I expect that the main reason for the blocked views is that the garden was always designed to be planted with old roses. Sissinghurst's old roses put on a spectacular display for a month in early summer, but afterwards are just billowing mounds of foliage until autumn, when many of them display showy rose hips, and no rose garden looks like much during the winter.

The open section between the doorway and the Rondel allows clear views of the long south facing border against the ancient wall of the old manorhouse. Of this part of her garden, Vita wrote: This in former days would almost automatically have become a herbaceous border, very garish in July and August, and far more pleasing no doubt to the general public, but to my mind the shrubs available today (many of which were of course unknown to our grandparents) are more interesting as well as more saving of labor."

The photograph at the top of this article shows the long border (on the right of the photo). You can see how the beds on both sides of the walk look like herbaceous borders. To a certain degree this does reflect how Vita grew peonies and bearded iris among her old roses, but after the National Trust took over the garden, many later blooming perennials were added so that the garden would be attractive in late summer. Vita accepted that her Rose Garden would have very few blooms in July. This didn't really bother her since she usually spent the months of July and August visiting other British gardens and traveling in foreign lands. The lilies that she planted among her roses did extend the garden's blooming season for a few weeks and Japanese anemones greeted her with their autumn blooms when she returned from her travels. Vita's Rose Garden was a product of the way that she lived and I wonder if it wouldn't be better to keep the garden so that it looked as it did when she gardened in it.

My next article will also be about Sissinghurst's Rose Garden

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