Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Sissinghurst Castle Garden was made from 1930 by the writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson around the ruins of an Elizabethan manor in the Kent Weald, so that the garden reads as a sequence of rooms: the White Garden, the Cottage Garden, the Rose Garden, the Lime Walk and the Nuttery. Vita wrote in the brick tower, and her writing room can be seen part way up the climb to the top, which reviewers call the best place to start for the view over the whole layout. The newer Delos garden, a dry Mediterranean planting, is still maturing, and a two-acre vegetable garden supplies the restaurant. Dogs are welcome on the estate walks but not in the garden. Tips from visitors: the garden has a visitor cap and fills quickly on fine mornings, so come early or after lunch when it thins; paths are too narrow for pushchairs in places; and carry a map on the estate walks, as the waymark posts are worn.