Appreciating Sissinghurst Castle Garden in autumn: Harold Nicolson’s structure emerges while fallen apples encourage wildlife

Sissinghurst’s head gardener Troy Scott Smith on the beauty of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson’s garden in autumn

Published: Tuesday, 29 October 2024 at 10:41 AM

Devoid of the exuberance of Vita Sackville-West’s flower garden, Harold Nicolson’s structure slowly begins to reveal itself in autumn – vistas open up and the sharp lines of his pen are once more etched into the garden.

It is now October and the change of mood from the flamboyance of summer to the mellow days of autumn brings a shift of gear in the garden. The symphony of colours, from the low smoulder of sedums in hues of faded Venetian red to the burning torch of Euonymus alatus, reminds us that time is short. The first frosts of the season will induce a sudden surge of senescence, making the soil cold and wet.

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We work quickly but methodically to plans made earlier. Everything that can usefully be done now, should be, with the emphasis always on next year. Hedge cutting remains a key autumn task. Our deciduous hedges of beech or hornbeam (where the ground is a little wetter) are cut twice, once in the second week of June and again in late September.

In the White Garden, Troy pairs Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Purity’ with Symphyotrichum pilosum var. pringlei (formerly Aster pilosus var. demotus), which he has taken with him from garden to garden. “A delightful species aster,” he says. “Its arching sprays of white flowers complement the cosmos perfectly.”

For box, we have shifted to a late autumn/winter cut (when not frosty or wet), with an idea that it is helpful to disrupt the overwintering box caterpillar. However, the bulk of our hedges are of yew and these are cut between 1 August and 1 November. Any sooner than the start of August and the hedge is tempted to grow again, if left any later than the beginning of November, new, young shoots may be exposed to frost.

Late-summer sowings provide earlier-flowering, larger plants, and are one way in which we are adapting our gardening to a changing climate.

It is clear to me that climate change is causing notable change, not only to the plants we can grow, but also to how we garden.

Asters flowers — Several asters light up the garden between September and the first frosts. Some old and unknown specimens, such as this one in the Purple Border, remain as ‘heirlooms’ from an earlier time. Elsewhere, Troy uses what he calls “the indispensable” Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’, which has large lavender-blue flowers that continue for months.

With dahlias, for example, which hitherto we would have lifted, we now either leave them in, planting them a little deeper so as to fill the space above with spring plants, or we still lift them, but later. In this case, we plant them further apart so we can add biennials to the spaces with the dahlias still in situ.

Pink Dahlia — Harold and Vita both loved dahlias, which have always been mainstays of Sissinghurst’s late-summer garden. Troy has recently added pink Dahlia ‘Stolz von Berlin’, an old cultivar dating from 1884, to the Rose Garden.

Autumn is also a time to pause and appreciate the season and the life around us. One of my favourite sights is that of the halos of red around the trees in the Orchard. These are the fallen apples we deliberately allow to drop. Throughout the autumn and winter, hedgehogs, mice and birds, including visiting fieldfares and redwings, feast on these apples, so that by spring not a morsel remains.

Sissinghurst orchard — The Orchard offers a bumper crop of fruit in autumn, much of which is left to fall to the ground for foraging wildlife. The grass is also the setting for the numerous spring-flowering bulbs the team plant in autumn. Credit: John Campbell

USEFUL INFORMATION
Address Sissinghurst Castle, Biddenden Road, nr Cranbrook, Kent TN17 2AB. Tel 01580 710700. Web nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst
Open Gardens open daily 11am-5.30pm. Admission £17.
Follow Troy on Instagram @troyscottsmith1