Sissinghurst

by Vita Sackville-West

  One of Vita’s troughs in the Top Courtyard.

  My parents, who used to travel abroad collecting plants in Greece and Italy, grew some of their most treasured things in troughs, raising them up so that you could see them clearly and enabling them to create just the right growing conditions needed for each precious plant. They grew species crocus, Italian anemones and the widow iris (Hermodactylus tuberosa), as well as auriculas, special snowdrops, sempervivum and autumn-flowering gentians. In a garden where the soil is limy – as theirs is outside Cambridge – growing gentians in a sink is good as they can be put in a lime-free mix.

  Vita has many suggestions, starting with planting a mass of one thing, selecting species that look good for most of the year. ‘You may wish to stick to one family such as the saxifrages which will eventually join up to form a close silvery mat, very pretty at all times of the year, but delicately lovely when starred all over by their tiny flowers, rosy, yellow, white, or red. It is impossible to give a complete list here, and all I can do is to urge you to make your choice in a nursery, where they are mostly grown in small pots and can be carried off when in full flower and planted out for an immediate effect. The wise thing to remember is that nearly all the saxifrages need limestone chips in the soil bed.

  ‘The sempervivums, or house-leeks, are perhaps the easiest subjects for a sink garden. Practically indestructible, they would be a good thing to arouse the interest of the very youthful gardener who might be allowed a sink of his or her very own. The cob-web house-leek is one of the most curious and attractive.’

  She also suggested planting a mix of different plants, a combination to flower in succession. ‘If you would prefer a miscellaneous collection which will carry you all through the spring and summer, with something coming out the whole time, something always new and fresh to look at … there are dozens of small hardy treasures.

  ‘Try carpeters such as Gypsophila fratensis or Raoulia australis; tufts such as the little thrift, Armeria caespitosa, or some of the smaller dianthus and violas; the choice is endless, and don’t forget that the whole thing can be inter-planted with small bulbs coming up through, thus doubling the available area with no detriment to any of its occupants. Some of the species, crocuses and tulips and narcissi and irises, are especially suitable.

  ‘You could also try: Thymus serpyllum for carpeting; saxifrages of the Kabschia or the encrusted kind; the tiny Alpine forget-me-not, Myosotis rupicola; the tiny Alpine poppy; Bellis Dresden China, a very bright pink little daisy; Erinus alpinus, pink; Veronica Allionii, violet spikes; Allium cyaneum, a five-inch high blue garlic; and even the midget roses, Roulettii and Oakington Ruby; and the innumerable bulbs such as the early species crocuses (Sieberi, Tomasianus), and the early species tulips such as linifolia, bright red, or dasystemon, green and grey; or orphanidea, bronze; and scillas and chionodoxas and grape hyacinths … There is plenty of scope.’

  Vita used her sinks to show off things like her garden auriculas to best effect, planting them out for their flowering months and then swapping them for something like tweedia when the auricula season was over.

  ‘Practical note: leave a space between the house-wall and the back of the container, or the house-wall will get damp.’

  11

  CUT FLOWERS

  Small pots of simple flowers were always to be found on Vita’s desk.

  Vita always had a few simple vases of flowers on the desk and table in her writing room in the Tower, as well as scattered around the rooms they used at Sissinghurst. It was important to her to have at least a sprig to pick every week of the year. As she says in In Your Garden, ‘A flowerless room is a soul-less room, to my thinking; but even one solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.’

  Typical of women of her class and time, she had Mrs Staples to look after her in the kitchen, so she never had to cook, as well as employing increasing numbers of gardeners; but flowers she always picked for herself. She was not one for the great Dutch still-life style, those complicated mixed arrangements, preferring casually chosen stems of one thing or another, or perhaps a big vase of blossom such as philadelphus, or a bunch of zinnias or dahlias to put on the central table in her writing room, or on the lapis lazuli table in the Big Room on the rare event they used it.

  She often sent Harold back to London with flowers for his flat. Once he reported in a letter to her during the war, ‘the stylosas [Iris unguicularis] have unfurled themselves quite beautifully back in London. It is as if all the Ladies at Longchamps had suddenly unfurled pale blue sunshades.’ Even when Harold was posted to Berlin in 1929, Vita sent flowers from the garden at Long Barn – daphne, iris, hyacinths and tulips – in the diplomatic bag.

  WINTER

  Winter flowers were particularly precious – the harbingers of greater abundance just around the corner. Vita loved to have plenty of things to pick for that time of the year – once the garden is chock-a-block, cut flowers are not so crucial. By late spring, you only need take a walk in the garden and you will feel replenished, but in winter, cut flowers inside are key.

  ‘Flowers come so thick in summer that one hesitates which to pick among so many, one is apt to forget the bare cold days when the earth is a miser offering only one or two, take it or leave it. Wrapped in mufflers and overcoats we go and peer about for a stray sprig of winter-sweet, a splashed and muddy hellebore, a premature violet – anything, anything to fill one solitary glass with some pretence of spring long before spring has really arrived. There are the bulbs, of course, which one has carefully plunged in ashes or placed in a dark cupboard, according to the instructions in the garden books and catalogues: but somehow there is always something a little artificial about any flower which has been compelled to bloom before its time. Even though we may not number ourselves among the rich who languidly fill their rooms on an order to the florist with lilac at Christmas and tulips on New Year’s Day, there is still, I think, a great difference between the flowers which we force and those which we have the patience to wait for at their proper season. For one thing, the forced flower always slightly spoils our delight in its outdoor successor when it normally arrives; and for another, the forced flower itself, however welcome, is always something of a fake. To the true lover of flowers, these arguments are disturbingly potent.

  ‘The moral of all this is, that we especially welcome any flower which lightens the gloom of winter of its own accord. The more fragile and improbable-looking, the better.’

  I was brought up with Iris unguicularis on my parents’ doorstep. They had a large clump they could pick from whenever they wanted, right through the winter until the middle of spring. I loved the purple cigars, chalky mauve on the outside, with a glimpse of rich plush purple within. My mother usually had a small glass vase of four or five stems by her telephone.

  Iris unguicularis ‘Walter Butts’.

  ‘The Algerian iris are most obliging plants,’ Vita tells us, ‘even if maltreated, but a little extra kindliness and understanding will bring forth an even better response. As is true of most of us, whether plants or humans.

  ‘Kindliness, so far as the Algerian iris is concerned, consists in starving it. Rich cultivation makes it run to leaf rather than to flower. What it really enjoys is being grown in a miserably poor soil, mostly composed of old lime and mortar rubble and even gravel: a gritty mixture at the foot of a sunny wall, the grittier and the sunnier the better. Sun and poverty are the two things it likes. To give it the maximum of sun to ripen itself off during the summer, you should chop down its leaves in May or early June and let the sun get at it for so long as our climate allows. There is no more that you can do for it except to guard it against snails and slugs. It is vital to do this if the flower is not to be nibbled and tattered by these creatures, which hibernate so happily within the leaves and in the cracks of the wall. Any proprietary slug-bait will do the job for you … It may be unkind to the snails, but one has to make one’s choice.

  ‘If you have not yet got this iris in
your garden and want to acquire it, you can plant it in March or April; but September is the best time for transplanting. It does not much like being split up and moved, so, whenever you acquire it, do make sure that it does not get too dry until it has had time to establish itself. After that, it will give you no trouble.’

  You can pick the odd aconite and float it in a shallow bowl, but snowdrops are even better for January and February vases. Arrange a few stems mixed with a sprig of ivy, or show off a bit and use a mini-noughts-and-crosses grid. Make this from straight stems of hazel or brightly coloured dogwood, cut just long enough to rest on the top of a small bowl, and tie them at every cross-over with a reef knot, all the knots arranged in the same direction so the grid can fold away. Then slide the mini-posies in, one to each square. The grid holds the flowers up out of the water, while still giving them plenty to drink, and transforms the delicate stems into something with impact. Slot the odd sprig of ivy in between.

  ‘We all love snowdrops, with a sentimental love going back to our childhood,’ Vita comments. ‘They bravely appeared through the snow, justifying their French name of Perce-neige, but perhaps we never knew very much about them beyond the fact that we could pick a bunch in January when there was very little else to pick.

  ‘There are many varieties, and it may come as a surprise to learn that at least three are autumn-flowering, even so early as September. Personally I prefer my snowdrops at the accustomed time, in the depth of winter.

  ‘Cultivation is easy, though it must be remembered that the commonest form, nivalis, will do better in some localities than in others, notably in Scotland and the northern counties. I suppose everybody knows that the time to dig up and replant the bulbs, dividing the clumps if necessary, is when the flowers are just beginning to fade. Move them quickly, and do not let them come into contact with any animal manure: they hate it.’

  For a shady spot, we’d be mad not to grow hellebores, both for the garden and – in the case of H. niger – picking for inside:

  ‘There are several kinds of Hellebore, but the two varieties usually seen in English gardens are more familiar under their prettier names of Christmas rose and Lenten rose, Helleborus niger and Helleborus orientalis respectively. They are true to their association with the calendar, which means that from December to April the clumps of one or the other are in flower.

  ‘Why the Christmas rose, which is white, should be called black in Latin I could not imagine until I discovered that the adjective referred to the root; but I still cannot imagine why people do not grow both these varieties more freely. They will fill up many an odd corner; their demands are few; and they will give flowers at a time of year when flowers are scarce. They like a rather shady place; moist, but well drained. A western aspect suits them. The one thing they will not stand is a poor sandy soil which gets dried out in the summer. Once planted, leave them alone. They will grow in strength from year to year especially if you give them an occasional mulch of compost, leaf-mould, or rotted manure. I have a plant in my garden which to my certain knowledge has been there for fifty years. It was bequeathed to me by an old countrywoman of the old type, who wanted me to have the enjoyment of it after she had gone.

  ‘It is, of course, cheaper to grow them from seed than to buy plants, and the seed germinates very readily if it is freshly harvested, say from the garden of a friend, in May or June.’

  Both H. niger and the Corsican hellebore (now called H. argutifolius), with its large, leathery, dark green leaves, make good cut flowers, the Corsican lasting up to a month in water if you’ve seared its stem ends, which I find makes them last longer than the splitting Vita advises.

  ‘The Christmas rose is ideal for picking, lasting for weeks indoors if you split the stems. Cover the clump with a hand-light [a glass cloche] to avoid splashing with mud from heavy rain. I have been told that the way to get long stems is to heap sand over the centre of the plant, when the flower-stalks, under the obligation of reaching for the light, will force their way upwards.

  ‘Those who share my taste for greenish flowers may like to grow the Corsican hellebore (H. corsicus), a tough and handsome plant whose tightly packed head of strangely livid blossoms will last either out of doors or in a bowl of water from early March to May. Before the flower buds open they look not unlike a bunch of Muscat grapes, but presently they open out flat, when they look like a miniature pale green water-lily, if you can imagine a water-lily about the size of a penny.’

  Lenten Rose – Helleborus orientalis.

  The Lenten hellebore (or Lenten rose), Helleborus orientalis – and the modern Garden Hybrids bred from them – are more temperamental as cut flowers, often not lasting on a long stem even if you sear the ends (see here). These are best cut short, the flowers held out of the water on a grid – using the same system as for snowdrops (see here). Or wait until one flower on each stem is just starting to form a seedpod. They usually have enough lignin (the substance which many plants possess that gives them their woodiness) in the cell walls by that stage to remain upstanding.

  SPRING

  Vita relished what she called a tussie-mussie, a small mixed bunch of winter and early spring bulbs for arranging in a sherry glass to sit on her desk as she wrote. These were her favourite mini-flower arrangements, best before the garden had properly got going. That’s when you can really appreciate the delicate small-scale perfection of these tiny mixes of flowers and leaves. It’s in late February when they really come into their own – you can have one or two sitting near you by your bed or on your desk every week for a month or two.

  When I was young my father had to have an operation for a duodenal ulcer. He was in bed for weeks in early spring and every Saturday I’d pick him a little posy which would just about keep going until the following weekend. As a result I’ve always loved them, two or three flowers of seven or eight different things – coloured polyanthus, Cyclamen coum, scillas, snowdrops, miniature highly scented Narcissus canaliculatus, the more delicate species crocus and a grape hyacinth or two – adding up to a bunch no bigger than the palm of my hand. That’s what Vita would call a tussie-mussie.

  ‘A dear near neighbour brought me a tussie-mussie this week,’ she writes in February 1950. ‘The dictionary defines tuzzymuzzy, or tussie-mussie, as a bunch or posy of flowers, a nosegay … It is composed of at least five different flowers, all perfectly chosen. She goes always for the best, which I am sure is the secret of good gardening: choose always the best of any variety you want to grow. Thus, in the bunch she brought me, the violets were pink violets, the sort called Coeur d’Alsace, and the one Iris Reticulata she put in was the sort called Hercules, which is redder than the familiar purple and gold. The grape-hyacinths were the small sky-blue azureus, which flowers earlier and is prettier than the dark blue later sort. The crocus in her bunch was not the common yellow, but had brown markings on its outside; I think it may be C. susianus or it may be Moonlight, but I forgot to ask her. The anemone that she put in must be a freakishly early bloom of Anemone St. Bavo, amethyst petals with an electric-blue centre. How wise she is to grow Anemone St. Bavo instead of the coarser Anemone St. Brigid.’

  One of Vita’s favoured spring cut flowers was the widow iris, Hermodactylus tuberosa. She loved iris, particularly this one with its delicious sweet scent and extraordinary green and black velvet flowers. I have grown these very successfully in a well-drained spot with soil on top of builders’ rubble – it’s the iris referred to earlier that my parents had a good clump of in one of their Vita-inspired sinks. The key thing is not to move them, as they’ll get better and better, the clumps eventually huge and covered with flowers for several weeks at a stretch. They don’t last long in water but their exotic colour, texture and scent make them hugely worthwhile. Arrange them simply on their own or with the beautiful white, green-outlined bells of the spring snowflake (Leucojum) which flowers at the same time.

  ‘Several correspondents have asked me to say something about that strangely coloured black a
nd green flower commonly called Iris tuberosa, or the Snakeshead iris, which is to be found in florists’ shops during March and April, sold in bunches, rather cheap,’ Vita wrote, in one of her Observer articles that would later be published in In your Garden. ‘I like being asked these questions, because they come as a challenge to my own many failures in gardening and make me examine my conscience to see where I have gone wrong. I have certainly gone wrong over my Iris tuberosa. I planted it in rather too shady a place, under an apple tree, in a rich old soil, and I now see that it ought to be given the maximum of sun, in a gritty, well-drained soil, exposed to as much baking as our English summer will afford.

  ‘It should not be difficult to grow. The tuber is not expensive and it should increase itself if you put it in the right sort of place, dry, hot, and sunny. An Italian by origin, it grows wild in other parts of southern Europe, all indicating that it would enjoy conditions as near as we can get to the Mediterranean coast.

  ‘A wise precaution: mark its position in the garden by a stick or a ring of stones, because it disappears altogether during the summer, and thus is liable to get dug up by mistake.’

  Gardeners and plantsmen and women can be terrible snobs – asserting that this zinnia or that dahlia is vulgar and should never be planted in your garden, however long it flowers and however easy it is to grow. One of the good things about Vita was that was not the case. She was confident enough in her own eye that she could rise above this kind of thing and make her own decisions, even if it pushed her outside conventional good taste: the familiar anemones were ‘a trifle coarse, perhaps … but how useful and flaunting!’ she enthused. ‘One should not be too much of a snob about one’s flowers. One should always preserve the nice balance between the elect and the ordinary. There is room in even the smallest garden for something to suit all tastes. I would never despise any flower just because you see it everywhere, provided it has its own beauty in its own right and is grown in the place that suits it. The common foxglove can give as much pleasure as the rarest lily – no, perhaps that isn’t quite true, but I hope you see what I mean.’