The rest of Sissinghurst's gardens were joint creations of Harold and Vita, but the Lime Walk was his alone; it even had its own gardener. In 1945 Harold lost his seat in parliament and decided to devote himself to his garden. Harold began to refer to the Lime Walk as "M.L.W." (My Life's Work) and declared that he was "determined to make MLW the loveliest spring border in England. The photo below, which was was taken in April, shows that he may have attained that goal.
The Lime Walk has always been mainly planted with bulbs. Because bulbs are dormant during the season when they are being planted, Harold kept meticulous records so that he would know which color schemes were successful and which areas needed to be replanted. The Lime Walk was at its best during the early 1950s, when Harold was especially conscientious about maintaining his notebooks. By the early 1960s, he tended to make casual notations about plantings being "rather sparse", without saying what needed to be done. The National Trust had avoided making any changes in the Lime Walk until after Harold's death in 1968, since then the bulbs have been replanted and great care is taken to make sure that the display is stunning year after year.
The Lime Walk connects the Rose Garden with the Nuttery. The Nuttery features 6 long rows of hazelnut trees (also called filberts), which were probably planted at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1930, when the Nicolsons first visited Sissinghurst, these trees were already mature. In April of 1930, Harold wrote in his diary that "We come suddenly upon the nut-walk and that settles it" - the Nicolsons decided to buy the property.
Since the Nuttery was such an important factor in their decision to buy Sissinghurst Castle, the garden had to be designed to feature them. My previous article is about Harold's rather complex solution to that problem. The map below shows the layout of the Nuttery and how Harold connected it with both the Lime Walk and the Cottage Garden.
If you compare the map below with the map above, you will get a good idea of how this part of the garden is laid out.
If you look on the map of the Nuttery, you will see a small dot in the center of the nut-walk that leads to the Lime Walk (the dot is to the left of the word "Nuttery" on the map). That dot indicates the location of the statue of a young god, shown in the photograph below. He is the Nuttery's only piece of sculpture.
