She was born in 1892 a few miles northwest at Knole, another of Kent’s ancient High Weald estates, and had been dabbling in planting long before she and her husband, the diplomat Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), purchased Sissinghurst in 1930. Early interest was sparked by a brief sojourn at a hillside property in Constantinople when accompanying Nicolson on his travels after their marriage in 1913. The exuberant colours and profusion of vegetation running wild in its abandoned garden made a deep impression.
Two years later, the couple bought Long Barn, a house of medieval origin not far from Knole. As well as visiting the sage of informal gardening, Gertrude Jekyll—Sackville-West described her as ‘rather fat, and rather grumbly’—planting schemes undertaken there between 1915 and 1930 were a trial run for the more fully realised vision at Sissinghurst.
The latter has been described as an attempt by Sackville-West to re-create Knole, a Jacobean pile awarded to her ancestor, Thomas Sackville, by Elizabeth I in 1566. She loved Knole deeply, but was bitterly aware that, as a female, she would never inherit, despite being an only child (the estate passed to her cousin on her father’s death in 1928).
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