In her epic poem 'The Garden', which was written during World War II and published in 1946, Vita wrote about her feelings towards gardens during the war: "Strange were those summers; summers filled with war. I think that the flowers were lovelier for the danger".
Sissinghurst Castle is located south of London, directly in the expected path of German invasion. Vita and Harold were both pessimistic about the war, but instead of losing interest in their garden, it became an important dream for the future. Vita first suggested the idea of a white garden to Harold on December 13, 1939; Harold's response to Vita's dreams for their garden was "Darling how these things take one away from the sorrow of war". They were to spend the next five years dreaming of how to make Sissinghurst's gardens more beautiful. For them, the war was like a very long winter.
In 1939 Vita feel in love a pink magnolia that was new to the gardening world. This tree was slow-growing, but Vita wrote that "I do not think that we should be put off by such considerations. A hundred years hence someone will come across it growing among the ruins of the tower...and will say that someone once cared for this place". In February of 1940, Vita estimated that during the past year she had bought between 11,000 and 12,000 Dutch flower bulbs. Vita's attitude towards such extravagance was "Let us plant and be merry, for by next autumn we may all be ruined".
Fortunately, Sissinghurst Castle survived the war unharmed, but the gardens did go through considerable changes. The grass of the lawns and the orchard was grown long and mown for hay; this didn't affect the blooming of the orchard's many bulbs, but you shouldn't picture Sissinghurst's flower beds looking the way that they do now. Roses and other shrubs survived, but perennial flowers were ripped out and replaced with vegetables - especially potatoes. Flower gardens were too much of a luxury in an England where there wasn't enough food. After the war it was difficult to find perennials to replant the flower beds; some flowers were lost to cultivation or had to be reintroduced from other parts of the world. When visiting old English gardens, it is easy to think that their flower beds have been lovingly tended for a hundred years or more, but most of them had to be replanted after the war.
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