Sissinghurst Under a Cloud (literally) on October 1st
October 19, 2012
This was my fifth visit to Sissinghurst in thirty years. Why so infrequent a visitor to what must be the most romantic English garden…so imaginatively planned, so well planted and so beautifully kept? Well, I live in Northamptonshire, Sissinghurst is in Kent and London sprawls between. One’s resolve falters at the thought of getting round the M25, so hectic, so jammed with cars, so dispiritingly ugly in every way. But we were spending a few days in the charming town of Whitstable so the nastiness was already got over and we whisked through the pretty Kent villages in the best of moods despite incessant rain. Because of the weather and it being late … very late … in the season the car park was almost empty. One coach from Holland and a scattering of cars. Buoyed up by a decent lunch in the restaurant …very good vegetables …and a glass or two of wine we entered the garden …..
this is one of four bronze urns at the entrance, planted with Verbena ‘Sissinghurst’ ….
….to find ourselves very nearly alone. On former visits one has fought one’s way down narrow paths past streams of people embosomed with cameras, waterbottles, coats and notebooks and patiently waited one’s turn to get a glimpse, through the gaps between heads and shoulders, of an entire shrub.
The Yew Walk
The Lime Walk
The Upper Court
I won’t show you any detailed borders because enthusiastic gardeners will already have whole books of them taken by professional photographers and unenthusiastic ones will be bored. I just want to say that the experience of being alone in this lovely place (husband having got fed up with the rain) wrought quite unexpectedly upon my feelings. There was delight, yes, spades of it, but also an inkling of the terrific sadness one must feel when one knows one is about to be separated by death from the cherished garden to which one has devoted so much time and thought and energy. This had not occurred to me before because I prefer not to DWELL …but I was much moved.
Victoria Clayton 
Such a beautiful place!
I am most struck by the photography.The photos really capture the mood and the beauty of this garden.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful garden with all of us who are continents away.
Lovely picture of the Upper Court, the rain washed pavement really adds to the picture. I felt a great sense of continuity looking at that picture. That building has stood the test of time and will continue to do so. Thank you for sharing that with us Victoria.
As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away,–
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like perfidy.
A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.
The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone,–
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.
And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.
Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
There once was a writer victorious (in Pytchley)
Who régaled the plebs oh! so glorious(ly, richly)
With her gardens and prose
As enchanting as those which
Appear for Nirvana notorious.
Ray on Dusoleil (2008 – )
From: Immortality, Vol. 1 (2012)
this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.
This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.
e. e. cummings (1894 – 1962)
Dear Victoria,
as the coming months will be mainly spent offline here, I shall be unable to follow your delightful blog with poetic musings – much to everyone’s relief, I suspect.
My family and I wish you all the very best and thank you for giving us prose that is unfailingly entertaining, civilized and stylish, thoughtful and of such great human warmth. Utile et dulce!
Here least and last (but meant as a token of appreciation) some fine poetry of my own creation, with some rococo refinements of established poetic form and metre. Emily Dickinson (had she been born in Ireland) would have been proud of me.
there once was a writer Victorious (in P … )
who régaled the plebs oh! so glorious(ly, richly)
with her Gardens and Prose
as enchanting as those – which
appear for Nirvana notorious.
Rayon Desoleil
From: Immortality, Vol. 1
Dear Annegret
Well, I call that unkind, I must say, swanning off and leaving me to my own devices. What shall I do with no poetry to entertain me? Must you go? Oh dear, I shall miss you.
Best wishes to your family, and especially to you Victoria
Victoria Clayton
Dear Victoria,
Thank you for your kindness! & if my babbling brook of poetic antiphony has diverted you, then never fear: I’m by this time so thoroughly addicted to your blog that I cannot do without it for long(er than necessary) at any rate, as is surely true for many others. And when one creates such dependencies – as a novelist & (lovely word) blogger – one surely has a public obligation & no excuse whatsoever not to go on – oh no! So in late Winter …
I shall return again; I shall return
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses …
Claude MacKay (1889 – 1948)