July 14 (Tuesday) – Sissinghurst Gardens

This morning we bought train tickets to Staplehurst, about an hour outside of London, where we picked up a taxi for a trip into the countryside to Sissinghurst Gardens, one of the most famous gardens in England.  The first manor home on the site was built in the 1300's with most of the buildings dating from the Elizabethan/Tudor era.  The buildings were purchased and restored in the 1930's and the gardens were created during that time.

The stables building was converted to living quarters.  Only the library section of the building was open to the public.  The buildings were all of brick...

and had wonderful Elizabethan detailing, including diamond shaped leaded windows.

But the main attraction of this building (for Mary) was that the brick buildings made a lovely backdrop for overflowing flower beds.

The site also included an Elizabethan tower.

The Tower Courtyard had wonderful flower beds of all colors and with vines and roses climbing the brick walls.

By climbing to the top of the tower we had great views of the gardens and the surrounding countryside of Kent. 

One of the more famous of the individual gardens in the complex is the White Garden with all of the plants having white flowers or silvery grey foliage.  The garden was surrounded by a high brick wall and backed up to a lovely cottage.

There was also a Cottage Garden, aptly situated beside another lovely cottage.

One avenue off the Cottage Garden was lined with massive flowerbed and led to a statue overlooking a pool.

The formal gardens had high yew hedges, with some forming alleys with statues at the end ...

and others forming outdoor rooms filled with many flower beds.

The garden was a wonderful place to sit and contemplate.

One thinks of roses when thinking of English Gardens.  And Sissinghurst had lots of roses.  But there were may other beautiful flowers in bloom.

Sunflowers

Thistles

Hollyhocks

Roses



Fairy Wands

There was one very interesting building that appeared to have oddly shaped "chimneys".  Turns out it was an Oast House that is used for "kilning" (or drying) hops used to make beer.

Oast House - for drying hops

We also took a walk out to the small nearby lakes on the property.

 The walk meandered through a forest with lots of ferns in the understory,...

 passed through a field filled with sheep,...

and proceed on through the apple orchard.

There was also a very large vegetable garden where they grow many of the vegetables used at the Granary Restaurant (housed in the farm’s old granary building). 

Vegetable Garden

Granary

Again it wasn’t very sunny.  We had overcast and clouds most of the day…right up until just before the taxi came to pick us up to take us to the train station.  It figures.

We got back to London shortly before Jim and Phyllis Bratt made it in from Paris on the Eurostar train (through the Channel Tunnel or Chunnel).  We went out for dinner and started planning some of our upcoming vacation days.