I like the whole process of decay that winter brings, the drawing back into the landscape, the slowing down and the time one has to reflect.
You may think winter is a time for hibernation, but far from it; winter is a time for doing. This is the only time of the year when you have a chance of keeping pace with the garden, and every task done now will mean a better garden in summer. It is a season of activity, yes, but also one of deep immersion with the moment and with your surroundings. One feels a real connection with the landscape and the environment; the sounds, smells and light all have a distinctive winter flavour.
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Winter at Sissinghurst is all about rose pruning. We start in early November with the climbers and ramblers (although this is becoming more difficult with the roses hanging on to their foliage for longer with the milder autumn weather). Next, we move on to Vita Sackville-West’s collection of more than 300 ‘old’ shrub roses.
The current method of pruning and training roses was introduced by Jack Vass, who was head gardener at Sissinghurst from 1939 to 1957. The technique involves pulling the long supple wands of growth down in an arc and anchoring into position. This bending of shoots near to horizontal prevents sap rising to the top of each stem, instead it encourages flowers to break from every bud along the entire length of the bent stem.
You may think winter is a time for hibernation, but far from it. Winter is a time for doing. This is the only time of the year when you have a chance of keeping pace with the garden.
A rose that needs very little pruning is the Burnet rose (Rosa spinosissima) and in recent years I have become excited at the potential of this little Scots rose. Vita once wrote of them: ‘The myriads of small flowers look as though swarms of butterflies had settled on the ferny foliage’. For me it is their resilience to our drier summers, their happy disposition, their attractive and healthy foliage, their early flowering and their good-looking hips that make them a group of roses worthy of consideration.
Elsewhere, we selectively cut and clear herbaceous perennials, only leaving those that either provide habitat for over- wintering insects, such as the hollow stems of Cirsium, or those that offer good winter structure, such as fennel.
Emerging from the parchment colours of these skeletal perennials are dabs of colour from the early flowering, but often overlooked, wood anemone, A. nemorosa. In our old nut coppice we have it growing alongside a beautiful pale-yellow form called A. x lipsiensis, where it acts as a duvet upon which other small flowering bulbs rest.
The wider estate
Vita Sackville-West had a very real and immediate relationship with the land. She loved the idea of the timelessness of the Weald, of the old buildings and garden growing out of the land where they sat, and the materials from which they were fashioned being of the land.
Vita shared this vision of Sissinghurst with her husband Harold Nicolson and together they reinvested life in the ruin with both flowers and farm. We benefit from the moves that Vita and Harold made, and from the legacy they left behind; a more reflective, romantic, slower, deeper place than might have been.
Today the garden sits within 470 acres of mixed Wealden landscape, including on its southern flank, 200 acres of woodland, with permanent pasture and arable to the north and east. Here and there fingers of Orchard reach to meet the garden and everywhere there is a sense of harmony and balance, of health and of nature thriving.
In recent years we have reintroduced the old farm pond that once stood at the garden entrance, reconnected the garden with the estate by allowing a stronger visual and physical dialogue between them and we have allowed native wildings to gently colonise and share our beds of exotics.
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
