The National Trust requires that the properties which it accepted be open to the public and self supporting; it also prefers that a member of the family live on the property. The idea is that if the family still live there, that it will feel more like a home than a museum, so the former servants quarters on the south side of the entrance arch were converted into a home for Nigel and his family. This was probably less traumatic for Nigel than it was for many members of his social class, because Sissinghurst's gardens had been open to the public for decades and he was used to living in fragments of the Tudor manorhouse. If anything, it was probably nice to live under a single roof, rather than having to walk across the garden like his parents did in order to get from their bedrooms to their dining room.
The National Trust has tried to maintain Sissinghurst so that it will look the way that it did when Vita lived there, but gardens are more difficult to maintain than interiors are.
The photo above shows the carpet of primroses in the nuttery which was one of the famous of Vita's plantings. As often happens when plants are grown in the same spot for many years, diseases had built up in the soil. The gardeners struggled to maintain the planting, but in 1975, it was decided to replace the primroses with a mixture of ferns and woodland flowers. This was the most drastic change in the plantings, but the rose garden also looks different than it used to. Sissinghurst's various gardens were designed to bloom at various times and the rose garden was mainly intended to be filled with roses during the month of June, with very few blooms in July, August, and September. The National Trust has bowed to popular taste by adding flowers that bloom after the roses and I am not alone in questioning this; I feel that it goes against the effect that Vita was aiming for. My own garden is rather large; something is always in bloom, but the entire garden isn't constantly filled with blooms. Various parts of the garden are planted to peak at different times; a section that is filled with blooms during June will be green foliage for the rest of the summer. I like this design approach; it makes the garden a different experience every month and I think that Vita's design decisions should be respected.
