Tradition and Styles of Landscape Design: Influence of Jekyll & Lutyens on Sissinghurst Castle Gardens

» Georgene A. Bramlage - Influence of Jekyll & Lutyens on Sissinghurst Castle Gardens

In response to message posted by Kirk_Johnson:
Hi Gay & Kirk!
To continue part of the discussion which we started ages ago…
From Gay I had yesterday an interesting question from a student, Kirk, who asked whether I felt there was much influence between the two wonderful gardeners, Vita and Gertrude.
I feel that Vita was such a self centered person that she did exactly what she wanted [or asker her husband to do it or ordered one of her gardeners] but that I was sure that she had Gertrude's books in her tower
From Kirk… Vita met Gertrude Jekyll once when she was a beginning gardener and Miss Jekyll was quite elderly. Vita had a rather defiant attitude towards Miss Jekyll's influence. Sissinghurst's purple border was a reaction to Miss Jekyll's warnings about using too much purple…
Kirk & Gay, although this is fun, the last thing I want to do is make this topic dwell too much on dead English gardeners, although we do owe them thanks for their sometimes too marked influence upon our own gardens. I especially enjoyed your remark, Kirk, about the discrepancy in appreciation of the color purple by Jekyll and Sackville-West.
I found references to the influence of Jekyll and Lutyens on Sackville-West's gardening style in Jane Brown's Gardens of a Golden Afternoon: The Story of a Partnership – Edwin Lutyens & Gertrude Jekyll in which Brown cites the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle along with those at Hidcote Manor and Darlington Hall as being the three most universally admired 20th century gardens influenced by the partnership.
Brown goes on to say that Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West's garden at Sissinghurst was made in the 1930's without consciously recognizing the partners' lead, but Lutyens was a frequent visitor, and a visitor who gave advice, at their previous home, Long Barn at Sevenoaks, which was the workshop for the Sissinghurst garden. Vita repeatedly rejected any Jekyll influence upon her planting, though Lutyens had taken her to Munstead Wood (which she found not looking its best) with Lady Sackville (Vita's mother) in August, 1917, and the same favorites, the same luxuriance and at the same time restraint in colours are there at Sissinghurst, gloriously for us all to see. Nigel Nicholson (son of Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson) feels that the Lutyens influence in his mother's garden is pervasive, and to anyone who has visited both Sissinghurst and Folly Farm (Lutyens' home place & garden), the same conclusion is inescapable. This information about Lutyens involvement at Long barn and his pervasive influenceat Sissinghurst is in a letter to Brown from Nigel Nicholson, 8 March 1981.
This is fun! Cheers!
How is your SU course on The Women Gardeners coming along, Gay?
Georgene (AKA Cercis)

-- posted by Georgene A. Bramlage