Please do not visit Sissinghurst Castle Garden
The Sissinghurst White Garden (right)
In the interests of conservation, please do not visit Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Unless of course, you are a garden designer, owner-designer or historian: in which case you have no alternative and should see our page on Sissinghurst garden visits.
Sissinghurst Garden should never have been marketed as a destination for coach parties, not even for the good ladies of the Gateshead Woman’s Rural Institute. I reached this elitist conclusion in the course of a visit to Sissinghurst Garden on 10th July 2009. At 10.55 am there was a traffic jam in Sissinghurst Village and it then took 15 minutes to negotiate the single-track road from the ‘turn-off’ (double entendre intended) to the Alton Towers-ish car parks. Luckily, an electric float was available for transfers to the Sissinghurst Ticket Office. We had to join a long queue for timed tickets to enter the garden and were given a ticket with a 30 minute wait for the 12 noon entry. Then we spent 20 of those 30 minutes queuing for coffee. There was no timed ticket system for the toilets but it was necessary to queue again, even for the urinals. It was not quite like visiting Bluewater Shopping Centre on the last Saturday before Christmas, but there were similarities.
Inside at last, poor old Sissinghurst Garden looked over-crowded and rather tired. The main show of white in the famous White Garden was sweaty T-shirts and some tasteless muts were dressed in reds, yellows, blues and other colours too. I asked an employee if it was often as busy as this. She said we were lucky to be here on a quiet day.
Remembering Adam Nicholson’s plea for Sissinghurst, to change and to become the World Lesbian Capital. I remarked to my wife that if she encountered any hot lesbian action in the undergrowth, my blog would benefit from a few good nipple shots. Escaping from the crush, we went to see Adam Nicholson’s new vegetable garden. It is no re-creation of Young Adam’s boyhood rural idyll, or his teenage fantasies. It is a high-tech production facility for the restaurant. We ‘invested’ in 2 coffees and 2 slices of cake, paying £10.80 for them and remembering the bargain eats we have so often enjoyed in motorway service stations.
It all makes me wonder if Sissinghurst should become a Theme Park, managed, like Warwick Castle, by Madame Tussaud’s. Phases 11 and 12 of the Sissinghurst International Development Programme (SIDP) are going to involve cows and pigs. Why not have tended by yokels in smocks with pretty milkmaids in Tess of the d’Urbervilles outfits? Just think of the merchandising opportunities. Later phases of the SIDP are expected to include:
13. The Sissinghurst Blue Garden (over-18s only)
14. The Sissinghurst Trump Hotel
15. The Sissinghurst Resort Spa and Conference Centre
16. The Sissinghurst Golf Course
17. The Sissinghurst International Airport
18. Sissinghurst Eurostar Station
19. The M2-Sissinghurst Link Road
20. The Sissinghurst range of Gay and Lesbian Sex Toys
I think you have a vocation as a comedian Tom..Hilarious blog and I quite understand and concur with your sentiment.
Comment by Adam Hodge — July 17, 2009 @ 7:31 am
All gardens change and ultimately disappear. Gardening is an artform which deals with change more than most. There is a an interesting treatment of this issue (a too popular garden) in Tom Wright in John Watkins and Tom Wright Managment and Maintenance of Historic Parks, Gardens and Landscapes, p.61: in 1991 visitor numbers were 190,000 with the introduction of timed visits and control of visitors total numbers tdropped to 135,000 by 2001 but what I have not been able to find is the current visitor numbers. I have not been able to find current visitor numbers does anyone know them?
Clearly a private garden cannot accept large numbers of visitors without total change.
Comment by Robert Holden — July 17, 2009 @ 10:23 am
I imagine this to be a bit like Monet’s Garden at Giverney. Hell if you get the timing wrong, wonderful if you get there before the crowds arrive.
Comment by Benz — July 17, 2009 @ 10:32 am
Absolutely agree with you Tom and that’s why I wouldn’t dream of featuring it on my blog!! I went once last year and that was 15 minutes before closing – it was the only way I could get a parking space, but of course then I had the problem of going against the flow as the exiting tourists tried to trample me! This experience was worse than trying to get a seat during an EasyJet stampede. I advise all visitors to go elsewhere and just be satisfied with the pictures of Sissinghurst. And… by the way, Giverny is just as bad!!!
Comment by Charlotte — July 18, 2009 @ 6:55 am
This sort of sneering and rather obvious humour is all very well, but we expect more constructive comment from you.
Comment by Andrew Cairns — July 20, 2009 @ 9:56 am
Sissinghurst has gained the reputation of being one of the garden highlights of England. I venture to say that most of the tourists visiting are very interested in gardens otherwise they would be at the Tower of London or the Changing of the Guards. In the interest of preserving this magnificent testimony to two of the most highly skilled garden artists, I suggest the National Trust triple the cost of admission and reduce by half the number of admissions allowed each day. Of course I say this having visited twice on my four Garden Tours of England, last June being the fourth. I too was taken back by the crowd, but so be it. Quaint is quickly disappearing all over England. Karen, from Baltimore
Comment by Karen Offutt — July 20, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
Amusing article Tom, agree with you; as every all season visitor will attest if you should try to visit Mottisfont Abbey Garden during rose week in June, or Kew during their Orchid festival!!! But I’d be delighted to learn how you differentiate ‘Gay and Lesbian’ sex toys from ‘heterosexual’ ones …?! I didn’t think sex toys were discriminatory in their use!? Consider yourself scolded (… and spanked).
Comment by roger — July 21, 2009 @ 9:19 am
Karen: you have a good suggestion. Another alternative would be to get people to book in advance, with a limited number of tickets available on the day. This works well for Katsura Imperial Villa and not quite so well for the Nasrid Palace at the Alhambra, because they still let too many people in.
Roger: you have revealed my ignorance of sex toys!
Charlotte: there is a serious point underlying my jesting.
Comment by Tom Turner — July 21, 2009 @ 5:33 pm
I’m a garden designer and know I should visit the great gardens, but I have never got to Sissinghurst because I’ve heard its really busy. It’s such a shame, but inevitable that it’s become so commercialised. I’ve put a link to this blog from my blog – hope you don’t mind.
Comment by Linsey Evans — July 21, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
Tom, your blog should include the fact that if you are down this way it’s better to go to Dixter -where many pathways are still too narrow for lots of large visitors – but the planting is alive and vibrant and Christopher Lloyd and Fergus Garrett’s atmosphere of creative camaraderie lives on.
In Sissinghurst’s defence they do have a couple of open evenings, June 21 being one, which pre-tv series were quite under subscribed, so a joy for those who went. The light is much better at that time of day too. As it is early morning – they also have early morning photography ‘courses’ and Painters in the Garden days, no need to be able to paint well, just take a sketch pad and gaze in relative solitude!
Comment by Marian — July 22, 2009 @ 5:54 pm
Re your comment on tastless mutts in coloured tee shirts, a great friend of mine always said that when one visits a beautiful place, one should try not to be the ugliest thing there..
Comment by Marian — July 22, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
Linsey: you are welcome to link.
Marian: I agree about Great Dixter. A painter’s day at Sissinghurst sounds fun but I am worried the results might compare with our local sketch club’s visit to a windmill (surprisingly high technical quality + surprisingly low artistic judgment)
Comment by Tom Turner — July 22, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
Re stages 13 – 20 of the SIDP I recommend “Megamogs” by Peter Haswell: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Megamogs-Red-Fox-picture-books/dp/009926661X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248288107&sr=8-4
Comment by Marian — July 22, 2009 @ 6:45 pm
Well. I read that “The Megamogs are a meddlesome, muddlesome mob of moggies. When their owner, Miss Marbletop, goes off in her sports car one day, the Megamogs set about improving her house in extraordinary ways.” Could they make Sissinghurst as popular as Hogwarts?
PS If Sissinghurst is as big a money-spinner as it appears to be, one has to say that the National Trust carries out some really excellent countryside management projects – for which it must need funds.
Comment by Tom Turner — July 22, 2009 @ 8:17 pm
Just back from Sissinghurst, decided to Google disappointing Sissinghurst to see if anyone agreed with me. I expected a lovely day out and a beautiful garden but instead found a garden that looked tired and past its sell by date. Trying to give it the benefit of the doubt, I thought perhaps I should have visited earlier in the season but now I think not. The crowds were terrible and the lines for the toilets, the food and the flowers were just not worth the wait.
Comment by Mary — August 2, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
I’m sorry Mary! Sissinghurst has quite an important place in garden history so one should go there if one must but, apart from this necessity, it is a disappointment – like Westminster Abbey.
Comment by Tom Turner — August 2, 2009 @ 7:59 pm
[...] gardens of our dreams. This was summed up recently by Tom Turner at the Gardenvisit website, who urges avoidance of Sissinghirst at all costs. Overcrowded access, a wait for his allocated ticket time slot, plus [...]
Pingback by Are gardens like Sissinghurst and Stourhead victims of their own success? | Better Gardening Tips — August 25, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
[...] gardens of our dreams. This was summed up recently by Tom Turner at the Gardenvisit website, who urges avoidance of Sissinghurst at all costs. Overcrowded access, a wait for his allocated ticket time slot, plus [...]
Pingback by Are Sissinghurst and Stourhead victims of their own success? | Better Gardening Tips — August 26, 2009 @ 7:23 am
I think that you should expect crowds, as it’s a very popular, especially at this time of the year. Fantastic gardens.
The food is another matter, catering for the crowds you would expect quality. Our experience was not what I would expect from such an establishment. Dry, not very fresh bread to accompany soup. Meat pie that could not be eaten, due to the tough, sinewy chunks of very cheap meat. We always thought that the National Trust could be relied upon to give quality, which is what have always expected. The catering has lost the plot.
Comment by Peter Fletcher — September 7, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
I have visited Sissinghurst many times since I was a tiny tot taken there by my parents. Mostly I wandered aimlessly around no doubt adding to the wear & tear. Last year, as a landcape student, I visited as part of a group shown around by our very knoweable tutor. His input totally transformed the experience. As for food we took our own including a birthaday cake!
Comment by Imogen — September 10, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
My grandfather used to go there on quiet sunday afternoons and was delighted to be able to ask Vita and Harold about the names of the plants they grew. I guess this was in the 1950s. But it now needs to be managed as treat for those with discerning eyes, not as a commercial honeypot. One simple measure would be to remove all parking for coaches. Then it could be put in a special category so that you have to apply in advance for a ticket. There could also be a special charge, even for National Trust members.
Comment by Tom Turner — September 11, 2009 @ 6:11 am
It’s the ‘commercial honeypot’ aspect that interests me. Are these gardens so short of money that they have to risk all to obtain it? Their marketing seems to have overtaken their management responsibilities as they become too successful.
Comment by Imogen — September 11, 2009 @ 6:57 am
I think Sissinghurst is treated as a ‘flagship/honeypot’, if not a ‘loss leader’. I do not think they make a big profit because more visitors necessitates more staff. They probably have more people running the car park than used to run the gardens. But I do not think they should do it. They are a national body and the national policy should be to spread the visitors around Kent gardens, encouraging new entrants to the ‘business’ of visiting public gardens.
Comment by Tom Turner — September 11, 2009 @ 8:23 am
Sissinghurst is definitely a flagship – I hear that National Trust visitors are up around 15% due to the ‘Staycationing’ trend this summer, but Sissinghurst’s numbers are up over 30%, no doubt due to the tv programme that was referred to by a journalist friend as ‘Adam and Madam’!
When asked if the telly programme was worth the bother one of the staff told me that it was great to have the visitors, but they all now feel a bit like the autumn grass. They are quieter now too, so a good time to visit..
Comment by Marian — September 11, 2009 @ 9:17 am
Having had wonderful visits to Sissinghurst in the last few years, very dismayed to read people’s adverse comments this summer about the jaded gardens & inferior catering – were thinking of going (setting off at 6a.m.) this Saturday 3rd as our only real holiday/treat/anniversary trip this year – worth it or not?? Please advise, or shall we simply go to ou local favourite Blickling Hall?
Speedy advice appreciated!
Jill
9a.m. Friday 2nd October
Comment by jill hollis-graves — October 2, 2009 @ 8:02 am
It is probably quieter at this time of year and it is, of course, a wonderful garden: so you should go – and then please tell us what you thought of the visit!
Comment by Tom Turner — October 2, 2009 @ 8:30 am
I was there this week and it is looking lovely, although like the rest of Kent very dry. A big hole in the long purple border due to cut-down cardoon, but some wonderful salvias and still plenty of interest. Take time to walk around the lakes beyond the moat if you go, and I think the best time is the end of the day around 5.30pm when the light is good and you can have the place to yourself.
Comment by Marian — October 2, 2009 @ 8:35 am
I have read much on the life of V. Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson… Vita was somewhat of a recluse. She would have a fit if she were alive to see people milling around in her gardens…Sorry, I live in the U.S. and cannot see it for myself…Such a shame!
Comment by c. barton — October 3, 2009 @ 11:41 pm
Hi Tom,
I”ve just come back from my trip to Sissinghurst and I have to admit I agree with you completely. I’m a landscape architect trained in the UK, so to see Sissinghurst was a sort of “must to do before I die” thing; my boyfriend, who’s an engineer, came to: he was looking forward to seeing the garden whose process of development he followed on the BBC. … The garden is marvellous, though the end of may is probably not the best time of the year if you want to see the famous White Garden & Co. On the other hand, this helped us to have a very quiet day: there were not so many people around but the place looked already over-crowded: I cannot imagine how it must have been in July.
I came back with some questions in my mind: Would Vita have been happy to have such a manicured garden? Is Harold trying to get out of his grave to throw all of us out? Has Sissinghurst lost is soul? At the end, it is the garden of the Bloomsbury Set elite but I couldn’t see any other elite but the one from the National Trust.
Comment by Elena — May 30, 2010 @ 10:20 am
I’m glad you had a good day at Sissinghurst – it can be a beautiful place.
The National Trust manages large tracts of countryside very well – and with no entry charges. So one has to wonder which National Trust properties are self-funding and which are funded non-revenue-generating properties. I have heard that Sissinghurst covers its costs but if it is not making fat profits then one has to wonder why not.
Comment by Tom Turner — May 30, 2010 @ 2:00 pm
I had the great pleasure of visiting Sissinghurst in June of 2001 and did not encounter what you now describe. There were visitors, but it was not crowded, and there was plenty of space for contemplation. The white garden was unforgettable. Perhaps I will just hold on to that lovely memory!
Comment by Linda Chase — June 30, 2010 @ 1:00 am
I wish more people could have the experience you had.
Comment by Tom Turner — June 30, 2010 @ 5:10 am