Kent 9 - Sissinghurst - a 1930's garden/an unconventional marriage /the Bloomsbury Set /very few spring flowers.

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"Beside the noble art of getting things done , there is a noble art of leaving things undone." Lin Yutang

The plan had been to visit a different town with different shops and places to see . Ticked the box. Visit a museum - done . See a castle and a cathedral . Both visited . Take in a dockyard and ships and a mighty river . Been there done it worn the T shirt. So what was left - a garden . Not just any old garden but one of the finest in England . That was the order of the day today . Tomorrow would be a stately home . More a stately house owned and lived in by one of the greatest prime ministers of the 20th century. Well that was the plan .

The problem with National Trust houses and gardens are the opening times . 10.30 at the earliest for a garden . 11.00 for a house to open . That would mean hanging round in the morning waiting for the gardens to open and making our leaving of Kent later in the day. With that brings travel problems . So Chartwell was put on the back burner for another visit. The noble art of leaving things undone was being observed. Perhaps we could visit the area again taking in the seaside towns , the Martello Towers on the coast and the other gardens and homes we were going to miss .

Driving to Sissinghurst was a nightmare . All the towns seems to lead into each other . The roads convuluted , through built up areas with no by pass in sight . We did eventually find the long lane down to Sissinghurst . The plan see the gardens when it was quiet . The car park even in March was full . Visitors milled up and down . Some walking extremely slowly . Others ambling along without a care in the world . The reception area was in a hut just in front of the gardens . We were as always welcomed , issued with tickets that could be handed back or reused as book markers plus a garden plan.

Oast houses stood to one side and the tower in front of us. The original manor house on the site was moated and the owners entertained Edward I in 1305. By 1490 the de Berhams who owned the house sold it to Thomas Baker a cloth producer. By the 1530's Cecily the daughter married Thomas Sackville Ist earl of Dorset . It was he and his wife who expanded the large courtyards and were visited by Elizabeth I. Following the Civil War as always fortunes changed and the family fell into decline leaving a building which too declined through neglect. It was eventually used as a prisoner of war camp during the 7 years War . We were to see grafitti carved into the walls of the tower by prisoners . The plaster had been hacked off and dates were carved into the soft materials beneath . These carvings were easily seen as we climbed the 78 steps to the top of the tower. It turned out that by the 19th century many of the buildings in the complex had been robbed of their stone but to be fair much remained . Eventually in 1928 the buildings were put up for sale at a price of £12,000. They were eventually bought by Harold Nicholson and his wife Vita Sackville - West . And what a couple they made .

The one advantage of going at this time of year we thought we might get the tower to ourselves and the gardens would have plenty of spring flowers and be manageable without the hustle and bustle of millions of visitors . The tower was indeed fairly empty but there was not a great deal to see inside . Display cases on the stairwells full of orange and blue glassware . Vitas writing room . Not quite the dark sombre Victorian room full of furniture . It had more airiness to it and a bit more light .Less dark and gloomy but still a touch overpowering . We had to look in from the stairwell through grills . I guess there was something similar on the other tower probably used as Harolds writing room but we were not able to find any entrance open . It was a little disappointing . The climb took us to the roof where we could look over the garden below . The garden rooms were clear below us all closed in by brick walls . Box hedging made everything formal . What was I expecting ? Spring flowers. The white garden perhaps would have white narcissus , winter flowering clematis , tulips , white crocus . The yellow garden daffodils , forsythia and yellow crocus . There should be flowers everywhere I thought . Too late for snowdrops, just right for daffodils and too early for Bluebells . We were at a funny point of the season where the days were getting longer . The weather was warming but it was still too early for a good English Cottage garden.

How wrong could I be ? Extremely as it turned out . There were crocus here and there , Snakes Head Frittileries in the grass . Signs of flowers beginning to come through. Tubs of daffodils too. The one thing about the garden at this time of year was that you could admire the box hedging , see the structure of the garden but sadly it felt devoid of any colour at all. Would I like to go again ? Yes in the summer when the perenniels. However I am not sure how much you would see of the long borders with so many visitors pawing over them . The roses would look wonderful but again sharing them with so many visitors would spoil the gardens .

We did however get some idea of the strange life the family lived . And what a strange living arrangement it was . Nicholson was born in Tehran the youngest son of the diplomat Arthur 1st Baron Carnock . He spent his boyhood throughout Europe and the Near East following his fathers work . He attended Balliol Oxford which resulted in a rather poor third class degree in 1909. He followed his father into the Foreign Office . In the same year he met novelist Vita Sackville- West. They married and embarked on what was an open marriage . Each allowed extra marital affairs which a great deal of the time ended with same sex relationships.

Vita was born in 1892 in Knowle the Kent home of her aristocratic ancestors . The only child of cousins Victoria and Lionel she lived a privileged life. Her home life was distinctly bohemian with a Spanish dancer. Vitas mother had been raised in a Parisian convent . Her father took mistresses . One an opera singer moved into the family home. Vita as a child was said to be lonely, never mixed with the local children and became close to Violet Kepple and Rosamund Grosvenor early in her life . A lesbian relationship began with Kepple . Oddly names crop up time and time again . Violet was the daughter of Alice - mistress of Edward VII . The name of course is familiar - coming down to us in history through her relationship to Judith Kepple who won Who wants to be a Millionaire and Camilla Parker Bowles the current Queen. Both Harold and Vita seemed to live an extremely odd lifestyle devoting their time to Bloomsbury Set parties , sharing and finding new partners of both sexes writing , travelling and gardening .

The house eventually was handed to the National Trust when Harold died . The owners are well known another Nicholson for his writing and Sarah Raven the BBC gardener who has appeared many times on Gardeners World .

We ended our visit with a trip to the cafe . Chocolate brownie washed down with a cappacino and a carrot cake washed down by an Espresso . The perfect end for a Kent visit . All that was left now was the trip to the Premier Inn in Tonbridge . Another building that looked like any other Premier Inn, same type of receptionist , same carpets, same bedding . It was a larger room with a more comfy chair . But why do they only give you one comfy chair when two share a room ?

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