Chickadee Gardens

Oh, Sissinghurst, you have woven your magic through me and I am a changed person.  For three weeks I had the privilege and honor to be a guest gardener at this iconic National Trust property. It is five acres of a garden, in a ruin, in a farm, which is how head gardener Troy Scott Smith describes it. Much has been written about it, I myself shared a visit in 2024. You can revisit those posts here and here for a dive into its history.  I wish to share with you the first of what will be several posts about my nearly month-long stay, a bit of its history and vision for the future, the ins and outs of being a guest gardener, and my wanderings in the Kent Weald. Today, as an introduction, I give you a day in the life, living on site in an Elizabethan ruin, working hard and getting to know the amazing gardening team. Walking out the front door of my cottage, this was my view going to work every day. It was surreal, looking at the long house known as the West Range, a building dat...