Sissinghurst Garden

The Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines contrast as the “enhancement of the apparent brightness or clarity of a design provided by the juxtaposition of different colors or textures.” This juxtaposition is precisely what Vita Sackville-West uses in her design of the Sissinghurst Garden. By creating contrast in each one of the garden rooms, Sackville-West calls attention to these notable differences to create such striking, rich, and playful spaces. These contrasts are featured everywhere in the design from the site view, to the form used throughout the garden, to the masses of plants that fill the garden.

From a plan view of the garden, we can see that Sackville West plays with contrast between rectilinear and biomorphic form. The gathering nodes, corridors, gateways, and edges are all rigid with clearly defined rectilinear edges. The planting schemes, on the other hand, are irregular and biomorphic. For example, the plan of the orchard has clearly defined straight paths running through it, while the planting design of the trees within the orchard follows no rectilinear form and appears almost random.

As we enter the garden and shift away from the plan view, we can see that there are still contrasts within each of the garden rooms themselves. The corridors and pathways are laid out in a rectilinear fashion with right angle floor patterning. The gathering spaces, which are compartmentalized into different rooms of the garden, are also rectilinear in form. The plant material, on the other hand, is widely biomorphic. By using a mono-culture planting design, dense groupings of plant material are formed to create rich biomorophic masses. The contrast between the two is most striking where the biomorphic plant groupings meet the edge of the rectilinear design. In order to maintain this sharp contrast, the low hedges that surround patches of plant material are kept rectilinear, while the plant structures are allowed to billow over them.

Contrasts are found even within the structures of the plant material themselves.By placing plants with highly contrasted structure next to each other, it draws more attention to each of these plant masses and creates a more visually striking design.

 

      

In the planting design, Sackville-West focuses on the structure of the plants before the color of the flower, although the color of the flower was not completely neglected. Plants within a certain color scheme were placed together, so that the contrast in walking from one room to another would be stark.

The canopy height is yet another way in which Sackville-West plays with contrast. Within the garden are masses of plant material with varying canopy heights. The rectilinear hedges that surround the flower masses are low, while the hedges that frame and define the corridors are high. The canopy height of the plant material falls just above the lowest hedge, while the canopy of the trees falls just above the heights of the tallest hedge. This creates a scheme of canopies that intersect well with one another and frame certain views within the garden. Here we can see how the low hedges, the tree canopy, and the trunks of the trees frame the view of the plant forms in the middle of the two.

The use of contrast is a technique that can be used to highlight certain structures. In the Sissinghurst Garden, contrasts are found in every aspect of the design from plan view to the planting design. Each of these contrasts contributes to the playful, striking design of the garden and creates an intriguing experience for the people within it.