Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Sissinghurst is the garden that taught a generation to think in rooms. Harold Nicolson drew the plan of long axial walks with small enclosed gardens opening off them, and Vita Sackville-West filled them with planting of great generosity. Her rule, from one of her Observer columns, was to cram every chink and cranny. The result covers only about five acres, but it feels much larger because high hedges and pink brick walls hide each space from the next.

Most visitors start at the long brick West Range, pass under the arch and look up at the slender Elizabethan Tower, where Vita's writing room is kept largely as she left it. Climb it if you can for a view over the whole plan. From there the garden rooms unfold: the White Garden, with its beds edged in clipped box, the rose garden full of old shrub roses, a cottage garden in reds, oranges and yellows, a purple border and a herb garden, with the orchard and moat beyond. Over 30 years Vita grew around 200 varieties of roses here, and the noisette rose Madame Alfred Carriere still climbs the South Cottage, planted before the deeds were even signed.

For gardeners, the lessons are about contrast: strict lines and boundaries with loose, abundant planting inside, colour themes held to a single room, and walls used for climbers wherever possible. Go early or late in the day to see the rooms at their quietest.