Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst

Author/Guide: Vita Sackville-West

Why a Booktrail?

1946 to 1957: The magic of Sissinghurst Castle gardens and its literary heritage

ISBN: 978-1844088966
Genre: Biography/memoirs, Guide book, Non-Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

From 1946 to 1957, Vita Sackville-West, the poet, bestselling author of All Passion Spent and maker of Sissinghurst, wrote a weekly column in the Observer describing her life at Sissinghurst, showing her to be one of the most visionary horticulturalists of the twentieth-century.

Sissinghurst has gone on to become one of the most visited and inspirational gardens in the world and this marvellous book, illustrated with drawings and original photographs throughout, shows us how it was created and how gardeners everywhere can use some of the ideas from both Sarah Raven and Vita Sackville-West.

Locations

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England - Kent - Sissinghurst
A: Sissinghurst Castle Garden
B: Sissinghurst Rd

Travel Guide

Travel BookTrail style and Visit Kent

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson (9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962) was an English poet, novelist, and garden designer.

In 1913, at age 21, Vita married the 27-year-old writer and politician Harold George Nicolson in the private chapel at Knole.

The couple had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships before and during their marriage. They were members of The Bloomsbury Group – writers and artists like themselves

In the early 1920s, Sackville-West wrote a memoir, not published until 1973 entitled Portrait of a Marriage which spoke and looked at her relationships.
In December 1922, Sackville-West first met Virginia Woolf at a dinner party in London. They became interested in each other’s work and later on were to have a long affair.
In the 1930s, the family acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent. Sissinghurst had once been owned by Vita’s ancestors, so that made it even more appealing than usual. There the couple created the famous gardens that are now run by the National Trust.