2009

2009 28 JUN
Sissinghurst Castle Gardens 28th June Visit Print
Sunday, 28 June 2009

Sissinghurst Castle Gardens 28th June visit.

 

 

  • Click on the image above to view gallery

Herb Garden
I have made two other visits to Sissinghurst Castle gardens this year and it was always my intention to make repeat visits to see how the garden changes during the seasons. Today’s visit was timed to coincide with the world famous White Garden being at its best and I think I got it just about right too. In the middle of the White Garden there is an arbour that has a single rambling rose covering it, and when it’s in flower it really does look stunning. The White Garden is planted with formal box hedging and this is planted with just white flowering plants or those that have silver foliage. Its hard to imagine unless you see it just how this could work but I just loved walking around the garden and standing in different places seeing how it all worked together and just taking it all in.


We had arrived at lunchtime and after eating our picnic enjoyed a short walk in the Kentish countryside and woodland that surrounds the garden. I had remembered too that if you want the garden to be quieter the time to visit is later in the day. We didn’t actually go into the garden until about 3.30 using the timed ticket we got when we first arrived. These tickets seem to work well as not too many people can ever enter the garden at one time, but once you are inside you can stay as long as you like. Just like I had found in the past the garden really is much quieter the closer it gets to closing time and you are able to sit and take in the atmosphere and enjoy the peace and quiet.


Cottage Garden
It wasn’t just the White Garden that was looking good; I thought the Herb Garden was looking really colourful too and the smell of the herbs when the sun shone was really gorgeous. The Rose Garden too needed the warm sun shining to bring out the strong perfume that was quite overpowering and with all the herbaceous plants that are also in the Rose Garden to complement the roses it was a pleasure to walk very slowly around there.


The last time I visited back in Early May I just couldn’t get enough of the Cottage Garden. It is predominantly planted with flowers using hot colours that complement the brickwork of the South Cottage. This time, although the plants were now different, they had been replaced with more flowering plants still using a palette of hot colours. I’m sure most of us would give anything to have a garden just like this of our own.
 

Rose Garden
The weather had promised to be sunny but it was really quite overcast for most of our visit. I think, however, this might have worked to my advantage. White flowers especially are not very easy to take pictures of in bright sunlight as all the detail is lost when your camera sensor tries to expose the picture correctly. To help me make sure this was not happening I checked my histogram on the camera frequently to make sure the white highlights were not blown and where necessary I dialled in some negative exposure compensation to stop this happening. The fact that we were there a bit later in the day helped with this too as the light was much gentler. Despite this, as soon as the sun did shine I was back in the Cottage Garden as I find those hot colours come to life with the sun shining on them.



I have included far more pictures in the gallery than I normally would to accompany this journal entry, but hopefully they show in particular just how stunning the White Garden looked on this day in late June, and you will get a feeling of what it’s like to be there in person.

 

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