I have previously mentioned that Tim and I love visiting gardens, so we had selected an optional tour for this afternoon – Sissinghurst Castle Garden in the county of Kent. It was a 50-minute ride each way, but the gardens were worth it.
Sissinghurst Castle was developed around an Elizabethan mansion, which was used to house French prisoners of war in the mid-eighteenth century. The central red-brick prospect tower still survives today, giving the estate its name, Sissinghurst Castle.
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| The Entrance to Sissinghurst |
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| The Tower and Top Courtyard |
Sissinghurst is a classic English country garden, and its design is romantic, unpretentious, and incredibly beautiful. Created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, the gardens are maintained today by the National Trust. The gardens are divided into ten “rooms,” each styled and planted in a different way. Beautifully aligned walls and hedges enclose each space, giving one an impression of peace and seclusion.
Wandering through the gardens was a delight, and abundance of flowers was spectacular. We admired the White Garden, the Rose Garden, Delos, and the Cottage Garden, one more beautiful than the other. We walked down to the moat and saw the gazebo and the boat house.
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| The White Garden |
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| The Rose Garden |
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| Delos |
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| The Cottage Garden |
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| The Gazebo and Boat House |
We also toured the Long Library, where Tim admired the books. There we saw a remarkable watercolor of Sissinghurst Castle in the 1760s when it was a prison.
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| The Long Library |
On our way out, we saw the Elizabethan barn and the Oast House, a building designed for drying hops as part of the brewing process. Here, we viewed an exhibit that presented the castle’s history from the Napoleonic wars up to the hop-picking era.
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| The Elizabethan Barn |
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| The Oast House |
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| View Across the Estate |
We couldn’t have had a more glorious day to tour such a spectacular garden.
On our way back to our ship, it was so thoughtful of Queen Elizabeth II to be there to greet us.
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| Hanging Out with Royalty |
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