Scampston and Sissinghurst

This summer, poor planning saw Euan book a week of his holidays when the girls were already committed to being at my parents' for Gullane Games week.  I can't think of a fancy holiday which would tempt them away from this wholesome week of sandcastle building and fancy dress parades, especially as their cousins come up from Northumberland for the event.
So, faced with a childfree week of free time, Euan and I decided to head south and visit gardens, do some walking, eat a lot and stock up the wine cellar with a day trip to France.  All things that the girls would find boring.
Seventeen years ago, after 4 years of living in each others pockets throughout university, Euan and I spent a year apart - I was studying for a post graduate museum qualification in Manchester and he had started proper work in a hospital in Gateshead - so every few weeks we met up for a weekend in Yorkshire.
Yorkshire is, for us, the county of romantic walks and pub meals.  So that is where we headed for out first garden - Scampston Walled Garden between York and Scarborough.
Scampston is a new garden created since 1999 inside a much older C18th walled garden. The overall design is by Piet Oudolf and was made the same year that he worked with Arne Maynard on the Gardens Illustrated show garden at the Chelsea Flower show.  It is a chance to see the perennial prairie plantings that Oudolf has popularised and see how they fare in a British garden.
The garden is divided into several "rooms" - lots of yew hedges and topiary which is still to grow and firm up; a plantsman's walk which is more of a spring spectacle and a bit too museumy for me, and formal grass gardens where grass is planted formally in drifts like a soft topiary - a bit like European parks.  So far, so interesting but then, in the middle, my ideal garden; the perennial meadow pictured above.
This was designed as a butterfly garden - so it is in shades of blue and pink and purple - densely planted with perennials which support each other.  The varieties are carefully selected so that they die gracefully - they have good seed-heads, they don't go doggy and collapse.
The idea is that you can sit on one of the low chairs, lean back and be surrounded by flowers and fluttering butterflies.  It doesn't contain many grasses and there is little contrast in leaf of flower size, no attempt is made to grade from high to low - it just looks like somewhere to dream and get lost in - a mad flowery meadow.
There is also a very good restaurant and a walk around the old C18th landscape park.
From Yorkshire we headed south to Kent to visit Sissinghurst - a garden I have never managed to get into before.  I had made it to the car park a few times but bizarrely always on days when it was closed either officially or for filming.  This time we made it inside the walls!

Sissinghurst is one of those gardens that, even when you haven't seen it in the flesh, seeps into your mind through all the photos, the writing, the celebrity culture of its creators Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicolson.  What I hadn't realised though was how well the various bits of the garden work together - the brouhaha flowery parts balanced by the austere spaces of grass and yew.
I had expected to love the white garden - I've seen so many beautiful gardens inspired by it from Scotland to Australia - and it is so romantic, the idea of a moonlit garden. As Vita wrote in her Observer newspaper column in January 1950."I cannot help hoping that the great ghostly barn owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer in the twightlight, the pale garden that I am now planting under the first flakes of snow". 
What I didn't expect was that I would be even more blown away by the sunny cottage garden planted outside the South Cottage, where Vita and Harold had their bedrooms.
Simple in layout, quartered with 4 Irish Yews in the centre the beds are crammed with fiery flowers, perennials shrubs and annuals jumbled together.  Mixed heights, clashing colours, controlled chaos.
I loved it.  This is what I want for our own private garden when we have one.

Comments

[Foxtail Lilly]

We went to Norfolk today and also saw a Piet Oldoulf garden at Pensthorpe waterfoul trust-his gardens blow me away, so loved seeing your blog pics,as my battery went flat on my camera !!

[Diana]

Fabulous photos Jane, and sounds like you had a great time away. I love Sissinghurst, (though it's a long time since I've visited) and all that colour and chaos, it's very inspiring.
D x

[Pam]

Earlier on this summer I went to a plant fair at Scampston with a friend. The garden truly wowed me and I'd love to go to the nursery he runs with his wife - maybe next year. Oh, and the day we visited the rain came down in stair rods. Still the best garden I've ever seen though.

P x

[erin]

Jane, thank you for sharing this wonderful outing. Your photography has taken a huge leap in the past few months. New camera, new how-to book? Whatever you're doing your photos are crystal clear, well composed and very inspiring!~Erin

[caireen]

How funny, I was just thinking of Sissinghurst the other day whilst reading another blogger who visited Kent. i remember going as a child, although for other reasons, my first bee sting!! Probably didn't appreciate them as much as I would now, these are lovely images and glad you and E got a break together. Cx

[tracy]

ohhh - made me feel homesick.
every summers evening we were lucky enough to pop in the car and be at Sissinghurst in 10 minutes - the woodlands are the most perfect place for a dog walk after all the visitors had gone home - just us and the loo cleaners and occasionally Sarah Raven and her beautiful mad dog that took an instant dislike to Talulla (or was just objecting to us being in her garden!)
happy memories - thank you x
t x

[Alice C]

Thank you for sharing these photos - I have not got the garden visiting habit yet but looking at these fabulous pictures I am wondering why on earth not.