{"id":37115,"date":"2024-06-13T12:14:35","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T10:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2694df3f-a8e2-40f9-8510-1f3c911fa6fa"},"modified":"2024-06-13T13:32:47","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T11:32:47","slug":"roses-roses-everywhere-how-the-gardeners-at-sissinghurst-keep-the-famous-garden-on-point-all-summer-long","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/gardensillustrated\/rss_feed\/roses-roses-everywhere-how-the-gardeners-at-sissinghurst-keep-the-famous-garden-on-point-all-summer-long\/","title":{"rendered":"Roses, roses everywhere: how the gardeners at Sissinghurst keep the famous garden on point all summer long"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ensuring Sissinghurst\u2019s famous roses look fabulous throughout the season is one of the many tasks keeping head gardener Troy Scott Smith and his team busy right now. Photographs John Campbell <\/p>

By <\/p>

Published: Thursday, 13 June 2024 at 10:14 AM<\/p>

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The vernal equinox may be the signal for the garden to wake up, but the slow burn of April and May is only fully ignited with the blaze of June<\/a>. Soaring spikes of lupins<\/a> begin to show colour, peony<\/a> buds rupture revealing their crinkled petals, cow parsley froths in broad waist-high swathes and poppies<\/a> dance in excited fecundity. For three weeks in June, the air within the crumbling walls of Sissinghurst hangs heavy with the intoxicating scent of roses<\/a>.<\/p>

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Of all Sissinghurst\u2019s flowers, it was the rose<\/a> that most captured Vita Sackville-West<\/a>\u2019s imagination. \u2018They have a generosity which is as desirable in plants as in people,\u2019 she wrote. They\u2019re central to the Sissinghurst style of planting and typical of its soft abundance.<\/p>
In the famous Rose Garden at Sissinghurst Castle Garden, musk roses, including Rosa \u2018Felicia\u2019 and R. \u2018Vanity\u2019 are partnered with a range of flowering perennials and bulbs, including Valeriana officinalis, the tall blue spires of Anchusa azurea, Lupinus \u2018The Chatelaine\u2019, Digitalis purpurea and Tragopogon porrifolius. Bulbs, including Allium aflatunense, inject colour. \u00a9 John Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Perhaps surprisingly, there is nothing grand at Sissinghurst; instead a relaxed atmosphere hugs the garden like a familiar overcoat. The garden is subtle yet striking, muscular yet free-flowing, spontaneous yet tight. The garden exhibits an unerring sense of proportion and detail but takes nothing away from its surroundings. The planting is uncluttered by an awareness of fashion or competition and rarities sit cheek by jowl with native wildlings.<\/p>
$\"The$
The walled Rose Garden, in what was originally Vita and Harold\u2019s vegetable garden, is filled with not just roses but layers of perennial planting. Its north-south path is studded along its length with a mix of roses, including Rosa \u2018Baron Girod de l\u2019Ain\u2019, Rosa \u2018James Mitchell\u2019 and Rosa \u2018Gloire de France\u2019, along with exotics and stalwarts, such as Geranium pratense \u2018Mrs Kendall Clark\u2019 and Clematis \u2018Mrs Cholmondeley\u2019. \u00a9 John Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>
These are the touchstones we work to, the frame within which I manage the garden today. People speculate that I must be constrained in what I would like to do here or that the idea of \u2018ancestor worship\u2019 gardening is taken too far at Sissinghurst. I don\u2019t agree \u2013 I find the embedded history of the site and the gardening philosophies of Vita and Harold a tool for creativity and ingenuity. My team and I are not method acting; our gardening is not about creating a pastiche or ossified facsimile of Vita and Harold\u2019s garden. Change and renewal are vital ingredients of a thriving, dynamic garden, it is the nature of change that matters, not change in itself.<\/p>
$\"Iris$
Iris \u2018Black Taffeta\u2019 threaded through with campanula and the biennial sweet rocket, Hesperis matronalis, behind. \u00a9 John Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Vita\u2019s planting style at Sissinghurst was instinctive and influenced by the plants she saw on her travels. These plants made an abiding impression and would constantly recur in her gardens and in her writing. Slabs of blue gentians<\/a> in the Orchard, broad rugs of bearded iris in the Rose Garden, tall shuffling spires of eremurus in the White Garden<\/a>, and in the Lower Courtyard, overhung by an enormous magnolia<\/a>, one of the most imposing of June-flowering plants<\/a>: Cardiocrinum giganteum<\/em>. Emerging from glossy green leaves somewhat reminiscent of a hosta<\/a> or veratrum, a stout stem rises up to three or more metres, from the top of which hang many long, narrow, trumpet-shaped, scented flowers of greenish white, maroon-red in the throat.<\/p>
$\"Another$
Another US hybrid from the 1940s, and one of Troy\u2019s all-time favourites, is Iris \u2018Shannopin\u2019. Its exuberance is tempered by gently embedding it among simple natives, such as blue cornflower, ox-eye daisies and foxgloves. \u00a9 John Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>
It was Vita\u2019s use of colour that set her above her contemporaries. Her style was based on \ufb02ower colour and relies on orchestrating subtle combinations and contrasts within an often narrow tonal band. In the Sunset Garden you can feel your pulse racing as the planting throbs in a tidal wave of deeply saturated colour. Reds<\/a>, oranges<\/a> and bright yellows collide with incredible intensity. The amazing vermillion-coloured flowers of Crocosmia<\/a><\/em> \u2018Lucifer\u2019 in tandem with Dahlia<\/a><\/em> \u2018Bishop of Llandaff\u2019 drip their glowing petals to the floor, like molten lava.<\/p>
$\"Made$
Made in the early 1950s, the White Garden represents the plantsmanship of Vita at its most highly developed. In early summer the creamy-white, fragrant flowers of Rosa \u2018Madame Legras de Saint Germain\u2019 sit cheek by jowl with Paeonia lactiflora \u2018Duchesse de Nemours\u2019. The grey foliage of Stachys byzantina offers a change of tone and the curious flowers of the annual white bladder campion, Silene vulgaris, bring a feeling of the wild. \u00a9 John Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Although not unique, Vita\u2019s White Garden was rare at the time, and became one of the most celebrated and influential gardens of the 20th century<\/p><\/blockquote>
However, it is to the White Garden<\/a> we turn to witness Vita\u2019s most symphonic and memorable use of colour; an essay in the use of flowers and foliage within the limited palette of grey, green and white. Repeated mounds of lavender<\/a> bubble like boiling water in a pan and the annual Ammi majus<\/em> hangs over the garden like sheets of faded muslin. In June, it is Crambe cordifolia<\/em> with its cage of white flowers<\/a> that soar overhead, frothing like a billowing cumulus cloud, that steals the show.<\/p>
$\"Form$
Form is everything when working in single colours, particularly white. Here Orlaya grandiflora swirls around Centranthus ruber \u2018Albus\u2019 with a single white foxglove adding a powerful vertical energy. \u00a9 John Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Although not unique, it was rare at the time, and became one of the most celebrated and influential gardens of the 20th century. Describing the garden, Vita wrote: \u2018The white-and-grey garden begins to look well in June, when the little avenue of Almond trees down the centre is draped with the lacy white festoons of Rosa filipes<\/em> and the genuine old \u2018Garland\u2019 Rose, and when generous plantings of Lilium regale<\/em> come up through the grey Artemisia and silvery Cineraria maritima<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>
$\"In$ In the long grass of the Orchard, a touch of romance is imparted by wild-looking roses, such as Rosa roxburghii, the chestnut rose, which has large single pale-pink flowers, followed by spiny yellow-green hips. \u00a9 John Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Although it is only June, my attention will soon shift to next year. Together my team and I analyse the planting throughout the year in each of the ten Sissinghurst \u2018rooms\u2019, making comments on what\u2019s looking good, what to add, what should be changed, tweaked or removed completely. It is only with these notes that we can plan for autumn changes and improvements for the following year. <\/p>
Discover more White Garden inspiration<\/a><\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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