Join Sky Arts and the National Trust as we take a journey around the country and across the centuries to discover Britain's most beautiful landscape and pleasure gardens. With unprecedented access to the Trust's properties and exclusive insights into the gardens' original designs and plans, this five-part series brings to life the stories behind each remarkable garden and the people who designed and built them.

Sissinghurst is the celebrated intimate and romantic garden designed by poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West and her husband, author and diplomat Sir Harold Nicolson. It comprises ten different sections or 'rooms', each with a different look and feel, including the Cottage Garden, the White Garden, the Lime Walk and the Nuttery, and was first opened to the public in 1938, prompting Vita to affectionately term the people who came to see it 'shillingses' after their entrance fee.

Vita and Harold's relationship wasn't exactly conventional. Members of the Bloomsbury group, they were both bisexual, while Vita in particular was predominantly a lesbian who had long-term affairs with Virginia Woolf and Violet Trefusis, daughter to Alice Keppel, Edward VII's mistress. In spite of their open marriage however, Vita and Harold had two sons and found a mutual passion in the design and maintenance of their classic, enduringly-popular English garden.


Inspired to get out into the garden?
The Sky Arts Music Service has a garden-inspired playlist, featuring classical tracks such as Rimsky-KorsakovThe Flight of the Bumble-Bee and Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending all ready for you to jump on your ride-on mower or prune your window box with. Just click here to listen.