The Sissinghurst Castle Garden Copper Planter Rolled Edge – Small

Sissinghurst Estate was a ruin when purchased by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson in 1930. After three years of clearing the long-overgrown land, the creation of ‘a garden where none was’ became a joint labour of love that would last for over three decades.

In general, Harold was responsible for the design and layout along strong architectural lines, while Vita (so named to differentiate her from her mother, also a Victoria) was the head of her team of gardeners, innovating with informal planting schemes to give visitors a horticultural experience of discovery and exploration.

First opened to the public in 1937, the gardens ‘drew on the sense of an abandoned past’ with the old Tower at its ancient heart. Although the White Garden is the most well-known of Sissinghurst’s ten garden rooms, the Cottage Garden by contrast has a sunset planting scheme of hot colours, warm reds and golds, which shout in a riot of colour in late summer and autumn. Here, in the centre of the garden nestled between four tall Irish yews, is an original Copper Copper. Probably found locally (maybe even in the Tower) this now planter is a remnant of some long-outdated Victorian water heating system, reused by Vita as an axis feature.

Poignantly, Vita wrote in 1959 ‘his scoop… it is still there – a little hollow in one of the stones near the central copper basin’, Harold used it to measure how much rain had fallen in the night. Three years later Vita passed, however, the garden that ‘tethered her floating heart’ remains to this day for us all to enjoy.

Invited by the National Trust, who now look after Sissinghurst Castle Garden for the nation, we are proud to have faithfully copied the original planter down to the last rivet.

Fashioned from the same grade of thick sheet brass, we have fabricated the distinctive bulbous shape and verdigris patinated The Sissinghurst Castle Garden Copper Planter to last another lifetime.

A contribution from the sale of every planter will be made in support of the National Trust’s conservation work, to ensure the nation’s historic houses, gardens and open spaces can be enjoyed for generations to come.

Photography credits:

© National Trust Image/Andrew Butler
© National Trust Image/Arnhel de Serra
© Natoinal Trust Image/David Sellman
© The Cecil Studio Archive at Sotheby’s