Summertime at Sissinghurst

Ensuring Sissinghurst’s famous roses look fabulous throughout the season is one of the many tasks keeping head gardener Troy Scott Smith and his team busy right now

- Troy Scott Smith

My team and I analyse the planting throughout the year in each of the ten Sissinghurst ‘rooms’, making comments on what’s looking good

The vernal equinox may be the signal for the garden to wake up, but the slow burn of April and May is only fully ignited with the blaze of June. Soaring spikes of lupins begin to show colour, peony buds rupture revealing their crinkled petals, cow parsley froths in broad waist-high swathes and poppies dance in excited fecundity. For three weeks in June, the air within the crumbling walls of Sissinghurst hangs heavy with the intoxicating scent of roses.

Of all Sissinghurst’s flowers, it was the rose that most captured Vita Sackville-West’s imagination. ‘They have a generosity which is as desirable in plants as in people,’ she wrote. They’re central to the Sissinghurst style of planting and typical of its soft abundance.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is nothing grand at Sissinghurst; instead a relaxed atmosphere hugs the garden like a familiar overcoat. The garden is subtle yet striking, muscular yet free-flowing, and spontaneous yet tight. The garden exhibits an unerring sense of proportion and detail but takes nothing away from its surroundings. The planting is uncluttered by an awareness of fashion or competition and rarities sit cheek by jowl with native wildlings.