Vita Sackville West’s White Garden at Sissinghurst is iconic and many gardeners, myself included, have tried to create their own little piece of that superb garden.
My own lasts about 2-4 weeks in spring, a much awaited sea of white before the summer dry begins. VSW wrote for The Guardian’s gardening column and in 1950, this is what she said about the idea of growing a mono-colour garden:
I garden for the love of it. It’s a form of organic meditation. Worries become smaller within the scope of the outdoors and there is the tremendous reassurance that life is solid and strong and that good things come again and again. And in between 84,000 words here and 90,000 words there, it’s a regular part of life…
My veggie garden. This is what I do to de-stress. I love being in the garden…
Snow peas and sugar snap peas.
The berries.
Red currants.
A bowl of delight.
For Christmas I’ll pick and pod peas, pick, pod and par-cook broadbeans and slip them from their skins, pick baby carrots, make a ratatouile with fresh yellow and green zucchini and dig some kipfler potatoes. Who cares about turkey when we can have all that plus a mango and mint salad and a beetroot (from the garden) and feta salad?
“There were two rows of auriculas by the path, very velvety and rich.” Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Last week I was given seven auriculas. They ranged in colour from cream through the softest green to burgundy and black, with a slash of the fiercest french blue thrown in.
