Is This England's Most Stunning Historic Garden? | Sissinghurst Castle

This is Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. It's a beautiful complex of Elizabethan buildings surrounded by what appears to be a quintessential English country garden. It's in pretty pristine condition today, but it wasn't always like that. At the start of 1930, everything here was overgrown and overlooked, marked by crumbling walls and chicken wire. And it was this wildness which enchanted the best-selling writer, Vita Sackville-West. Vita fell in love with Sissinghurst at first sight. For her, this messy patch of land was a wonderful opportunity, a blank canvas on which she could cultivate and express every aspect of her unique character and every one of her passions. Her writing, her family's history and ancestral home, gardening, other women, her husband Harold, all would be expressed in the buildings and grounds around me. This is the story of Vita Sissinghurst. This is the story of Vita in Love. Vita clearly had a high opinion of her work, and you can really see how living here at impacted her writing, which was rooted in a deep connection to the past, to ancestry and inheritance. But why exactly was Vita so besotted by these grand, beguiling rooms? It's obviously a beautiful house, it's her childhood home, but is there something more than that? Did Noel mean something deeper or richer? Because she's so obsessed with it. I think it was a way that sort of the first two decades of her life, Noel was her escape, she could be herself. The early photographs of her, she's dressed obviously in the idea of what her mother would have wanted her to worn. This one is when she's about the age of two. And as you can see, the idea of her in frilled lace, holding a doll. So as you go through when she's a little bit older, here outside with her mother. And then this painting was commissioned at the time of her coming of age, becoming a young lady. Presented to society. Presented to society, but these clothes were chosen by her mother and she hated this portrait. And then you can see her latterly when her first son was born, Ben, in 1914. And then when she came to visit her parents with her two young children. They're very formal, these images, aren't they? Yes. And you can imagine that, you know, here she is formal, photographed, especially this one. And then in the attic, she would have come here and kind of been free to express herself in whatever way. Coming here to Noel and standing in these sumptuous staterooms with all these Sackville ancestors looking down from the walls, you can begin to understand quite what a significant role this house played for Vita. What an impression it might have left on a young child, an only child with a curious and creative spirit. It certainly made a mark on Vita. She addressed Noel as if it was some sort of companion, writing things like, so I have loved thee as a lonely child, or even scarcely a stone of you I had not kissed. Living at Noel and growing up as Sackville was integral to Vita's identity, to who she was. So it was a momentous blow for Vita to learn that, due to the laws of primogeniture, she would not inherit the family home. Instead, it passed to her uncle and his children. Vita's Noel was snatched away from her forever. Sissinghurst, though, did something to soothe this mighty loss. For in these mullioned windows, these red brick walls softened by centuries of change, and in these wild gardens were traces of grandeur. And it's often been thought that at Sissinghurst, Vita hoped to resurrect the spirit of her parents' great ancestral home. Sissinghurst was the perfect place for this for a couple of reasons. First of all, Vita's ancestors had actually lived here in the 16th century, Sir Thomas Sackville, the first Earl of Dorset, so it was a tangible link to Vita's family history. But secondly, for a keen gardener such as Vita, this was a blank canvas and a chance to express and experiment with her own creativity. And in the design of the gardens here at Sissinghurst, she tried to recapture some of the architectural fabric of Noel. Unfortunately, we got caught in a rainstorm. It's not ideal for painting, I have to say. First, I mean, that is what Sissinghurst is all about, I suppose. Big extremes. One moment you're in beautiful, sunny English weather, and then the heavens open. And actually, that is what Sissinghurst is about in some ways. It's about these changing shifts. And actually, when you go from the white garden to the rose garden to the cottage garden, they all have changing moods and they do shift in tone, just like walking from, say, a drawing room to a morning room. And although my painting journey has been cut a little short, it's been an interesting way to look at Vita's designs. And actually, she did talk about the way that she laid the flowers out as bits of paint on a palette randomly assorted these bright blotches of colour. Soon enough, the sun bursts through the clouds, and within minutes, Sissinghurst transforms once again. The more time I spend here, as the light and weather changes, the more curious these gardens become, constantly revealing new secrets and perspectives. One of the most effective spaces Vita created can be found beside the South Cottage. Here, the flowers are restricted to a narrow spectrum of hot colours to emulate the effect of a sunset. It's an explosion of bright oranges, fiery reds and dazzling golds. I'm meeting Deputy Head Gardener, Helen Champion, to find out how Vita and Harold brought this space to life. I think the first thing to say, it was a true partnership. So it's one of those unique occasions, I think, where two minds come together and just bring, you know, their own unique perspectives and skills to create something really special. I mean, both of them were amateurs, that's really important to remember, because Harold was actually a diplomat, and comes along with his graph paper and his pencils and makes this incredible garden, designs this incredible garden with these long bistas, with these focal points, and he was battling with what he called awkward angles, and Vita called minor crookedness, which actually was a sort of very calm understatement by Harold, because some of the spaces are really difficult. So tell me a bit about Vita's approach to gardening, what kind of gardener was she? Well, she was an amateur, but a knowledgeable one, and it's interesting when you look back at her gardening notes, she wrote things like, well, what a good climbing rosy, where and when to plant lilacs, and she obviously felt confident enough and creative enough and wanted to have that opportunity to explore those colours, and then she went even further with the white garden, and explored those colours of, you know, white, silver, green, and grey. So yeah, she was experimental, not afraid to make mistakes. Looking at their work, Harold and Vita's work, as someone who is a professional gardener yourself, are you, you know, what would you, what's your evaluation of that? You know, do you think it's quite an impressive thing that they did this as amateurs? I think it's amazing. I think Harold is very underrated. You know, to take this whole site, when you look down on an aerial photograph, you see the absolute crookedness of the whole site, and the fact that you enter through under the arch, and you look down, and you see right to the end of the moat, the statue of Dionysus, and you think you're looking at a straight line, and you think, wow, that's so, it feels so satisfying. But when you actually look at it from above, you see how cleverly he has made, like, messed with your perspective, really, and your view, so that you're thinking it's straight. At the very heart of Sissinghurst is one of the most beautiful Tudor buildings in the country, a soaring red brick tower, the great survivor of Sir Thomas Sackville's original manor house. Vita thought of it as Sleeping Beauty's castle, and it was in these walls that she set up her very private writing room, currently undergoing essential conservation work by the National Trust. There are 78 steps up to the parapet, and the views of the Kent countryside are well worth the climb. Thanks for watching this video on the History Hit YouTube channel. You can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out, or if you are a true history fan, check out our special dedicated history channel, historyhit.tv. You're going to love it.