Step inside the world's most famous garden and understand the strength of its attraction in this beautiful and fascinating study. Since is was bought and transformed by writer Vita Sackville West and diplomat Harold Nicholson in the 1930s, this garden has captured imaginations with its unique and intricate design. This unforgettable garden of rooms is influential today for its design, its exuberant planting, and its effect on visitors as a complete garden experience. Author Tim Richardson explores its power and its magic, explaining the nuances of its evolution and shows how we can all enjoy it today. Beautiful photographs transport you to the National Trust property, showcasing it in all its brilliance.

From 1946 to 1957, Vita Sackville-West, the poet, bestselling author of All Passion Spent and maker of Sissinghurst, wrote a weekly column in the Observer describing her life at Sissinghurst, showing her to be one of the most visionary horticulturalists of the twentieth-century. With wonderful additions by Sarah Raven, Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst draws on this extraordinary archive, revealing Vita's most loved flowers, as well as offering practical advice for gardeners. Often funny and completely accessibly written with colour and originality, it also describes details of the trials and tribulations of crafting a place of beauty and elegance. Sissinghurst has gone on to become one of the most visited and inspirational gardens in the world and this marvellous book, illustrated with drawings and original photographs throughout, shows us how it was created and how gardeners everywhere can use some of the ideas from both Sarah Raven and Vita Sackville-West.

In SISSINGHURST: A DREAM GARDEN Tim Richardson reveals the magic and the mystery of these world-famous and most evocative English gardens, famous for their horticulture, their creators and the realisation of personal dreams.

The celebrated garden at Sissinghurst, created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, has an unsurpassed romantic atmosphere. This book records the garden in all its seasons and moods, as well as the hosts of special plants and the inventive planting schemes.

Describes design, development and maintenance of the garden at Sissinghurst created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson, one of the most visited in Britain.

Secret Gardens of Somerset offers a personal tour of 20 of the UK’s most beguiling gardens in this much-loved area of southern England, defined by its distinctive horticulture, rolling hills, picturesque villages and the most traditional English landscape. Abigail Willis and Clive Boursnell give you privileged access to 20 gardens, from a highly productive working flower farm to very personal private retreats, revealing their history, design and plant collections, in the company of their devoted owners and head gardeners. In the footsteps of artists and trend-setters from Victorian designers such as Harold Peto to planting visionary, Gertrude Jekyll as well as contemporary pioneer Piet Oudolf, we find a series of beguiling country gardens of different sizes and atmospheres, which have shaped the English identity, and in different ways express the ideals of English life. The gardens: The American Museum and Gardens, Barley Wood Walled Garden, Batcombe House, The Bishop’s Palace, Common Farm, Cothay Manor, East Lambrook Manor, Elworthy Cottage, Forest Lodge, Greencombe Gardens, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Hestercombe, Iford Manor, Kilver Court, Midney Gardens, Milton Lodge gardens, The Newt in Somerset, Stoberry House, Westbrook House, and Yeo Valley Organic Garden. Most of the gardens included here are privately owned and usually open to the public. Meanwhile, all of these landscapes can now be enjoyed through the eyes of the owners themselves. Tour even more magnificent English gardens with Secret Gardens of the Cotswolds and Secret Gardens of East Anglia.

The first major overview of the works of the United Kingdom's leading and highly influential landscape architect and designer Tom Stuart-Smith.