We have been working our way across the south of England towards the southeast corner of the country, an area represented by two counties: East Sussex and Kent.
Great Dixter is located in East Sussex and was the site of a house that has been here since 1450 when it was called Dixter. In the early 1900s the owner at the time bought and moved a similar house that was built in the 1600s and moved it to Dixter, combining the two and calling them Great Dixter.
The garden is designed in the arts and crafts style, and features topiary, long borders, an orchard and a wild flower meadow. The planting is profuse, yet structured, and has featured many bold experiments of form, color and combinations.
Inside the house you’ll find everything you’ve ever dreamed of in the world of old English homes with the addition of the curiosity of a squint.
Squints were built up high in great rooms as a way for those on the upper floor to see what those on the lower floor were doing. Sort of like a peephole!
Great Dixter was a great garden and we were happy to have seen it.
Our next stop was about 30 minutes away at a place called Sissinghurst.
The site of Sissinghurst is ancient and has been occupied since at least the Middle Ages. The present-day buildings began as a house built in the 1530s.
Sissinghurst was bought by a young couple in 1930, and over the next thirty years, working with, and later succeeded by, a series of notable head gardeners, the couple transformed a farmstead of “squalor and slovenly disorder” into one of the world’s most influential gardens.
The garden design is based on axial walks that open onto enclosed gardens, termed “garden rooms”, one of the earliest examples of this gardening style.
We wandered through all of the beautiful gardens at Sissinghurst and each was as lovely as the last.
These two stops were the latest in what has been an incredible week of seeing English gardens. Our last countryside stop is Gravetye Manor in Sussex. It might be our favorite of the whole trip!
