National Trust Visit: Sissinghust Castle Garden

This blog post is going to be a little slice of life/adventure for you. During my stay in Kent, with one of my very best friends, we visited Sissinghurst castle garden. It was a really lovely day, the sun was shining, birds were singing and the walled garden looked fantastic.

They have a lovely little cafe there, where I got a latte and a salad, but not just any salad! I chose to get a beetroot and goats cheese salad, even though I'd never had either of those things before. It was just one of those more impulsive days. It was a good guess!

Myself and my friend Anna paid to enter the house and the gardens. The view from the top of the tower was amazing. This picture really doesn't do it justice. You could see for miles of rolling hills and beautiful scenery. It was really something special.

For those of you that don't know, Sissinghurst castleonce belonged to the passionate and exuberant Vita Sackville-West, a poet. Looking around you can see all the wonders she had to create her poetry with. She created one of the area's most iconic and peaceful gardens and used it to broaden her literary mind.

I bought one of her poetry books, Il gardino, an anthology of poems about the garden in Sissinghurst. It's superbly written and is one of my favourites to date, both for the lyrical words that soothe the mind and for a certain green-blue post-it. While I stayed with her, Anna must have slipped it in, but I didn't notice until I opened the book again at home.

On this special little postit she'd written 'I love you, Penny, my moon and sun.'. The surprise at having discovered this unexpected treasure made me feel really warm and wanted. I haven't been able to bring myself to remove it, not even to paste it into my scrapbook or in my memory box. This way every time I open Il gardino I get a little bit of my best friend.

The poetry itself is nicely penned. It's very reflective on experiences and the patterns in life. While she talks about the trials of nurturing a garden from a bare patch of earth, Vita goes on to compare it wholely to life in a very introspective yet compelling way.

In spring it's easy to see where she gets her inspiration from. The daffodils were out in full bloom, almost carpeting the ground in some places. It was an amazing place.

Vita Sackville west had the most beautiful library. It's any book sellers dream! I loved this small round room that came off from the main staircase. It had shelves stacked high all the way around and a ladder for getting to the great leather bound tomes. Most of all it looked warm.