Fell in love again, welcome to Sissinghurst!

Sissinghurst Castle Garden was not on our tour of the gardens in London. It’s about an hour train ride south. I was surprised when only three people wanted to travel there on our day off. This garden was on all of their bucket lists as well as mine.

So in the morning we walked to the train station, figured things out and headed for the historic garden through the suburbs and countryside outside London.

You can read all about the history of the garden here, when I visit a garden like this, all I want is to soak in the beauty and explore the landscape with my camera on my own. I don’t need a welcome speech or a map, just let me loose. There’s a feeling of freedom exploring this way. With no tour guide or schedule except making the train back late that afternoon, there’s time to sit, look and become immersed in the garden.

This is the first garden I saw when visiting Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Believe it or not, it just kept getting better. Photos by Doug Oster

As I walked into the first walled garden an older woman, with little notebook in hand was looking over some pure white Siberian iris, scribbling down notes about the plant. “Don’t they look like butterflies,” she said sweetly. We talked for 10 minutes about how she was filling her notebook with ideas for her own garden. Something she does here annually.

“Don’t they look like butterflies,” a woman asked me.

The next five hours was heavenly as I went from garden to garden, each bed filled with plants which had just finished, just began or were about to bloom. There were long alleys filled with mature plants in their prime. The breeze blew intense and wonderful fragrances, some spicy some sweet and others that just captivating.

This wisteria smelled incredible and was covered in bees.

I walked down a long road away from the garden and stumbled onto a ewe with two lambs who were just as interested in me as I was in them. Going off the beaten path always brings with it rewards.

This little lamb was curious about who was climbing through the brambles to get a photo.

In the he large expansive meadow a couple walked up the path towards the house holding hands. There’s a laid back feeling here that everyone seems to feel.

I like seeing and photographing little moments like this one in the garden.

When I reunited with the three other visitors we shared in an amazing afterglow that lasted well beyond our trip home. We had seen our share of wonderful gardens during this trip, but there’s something different about Sissinghurst Castle Garden, at least for us. It was moving to spend the day here.

For them part of the attraction was the rich history of the couple who created the garden. But for me there was something wonderful about walking the garden ignorant and innocent.

What’s funny is we all got the same thing out of our visit. We spent the train ride back telling stories of what we saw, felt and loved about the garden. We simply couldn’t help it, as we got closer to London I laid my head back and smiled. It’s a day I’ll never forget and everyone knows how precious those are.

A view from the tower.