Sissinghurst by Vita Sackville-West

Author:Vita Sackville-West
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466865983
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Philadelphus coronarius.

Starting with philadelphus, its name ‘seems to suit it nicely, meaning brotherly or sisterly love in Greek, suggesting a purity of love distinct from any sexual passion.

‘Yet the thing is bridal. It makes huge bushes of the purest white. The love of siblings may be all very well, but it is a truly nuptial thing, an epithalamium of a poem for young lovers.

‘I saw it foaming about in two famous gardens I recently went to in Gloucestershire. I saw it also in all the cottage gardens of that incomparable Cotswold country. It was everywhere; all over the place. I scolded myself for not having planted philadelphus in masses when I first started to make my garden. Had I done so years ago, I should have had huge bushes by now, but it is never too late.

‘I have got the dear old Philadelphus coronarius, that sweet-scented bush that takes one straight back to one’s childhood. Three hundred years ago, Gerard the herbalist wrote that he had cut some flowers of this old plant, and laid them in his chamber, but found them of so unacquainted a savour that he could not take rest until he had cast them out. This can mean only that he found the scent too strong. What I hadn’t realized was that some of the later flowering sorts were almost equally generous of their scent. Now I know better. The little microphyllus may not be very showy but smells delicious in its small white flowers. Lemoinei erectus is also sweet-scented. Belle Etoile isn’t; or at any rate I can’t detect any scent in it. Perhaps that is the fault of my nose; anyhow it is so magnificent a shrub that we all ought to grow it. You have P. virginal, with big white double flowers, a lovely cool green-and-white sight in midsummer; and Belle Etoile and P. purpureo-maculatus, white with a purple blotch in the centre; the last two scentless, alas, unlike the spring-flowering P. coronarius. Grandiflorus is the one with big single white flowers, very decorative but entirely scentless, which may be a recommendation for people who do not like heavily-scented flowers in their rooms.

‘By the way, if you strip all the leaves from cut branches, they will last far longer, besides gaining in beauty. Try. And smash the woody stems with a hammer. [Or sear the stem ends in boiling water for thirty seconds.]

‘The philadelphus family is so complicated that it is difficult to distinguish between them. They hybridize so freely amongst themselves that scarcely anybody knows now which are species or which are hybrids. Do we have to worry about this? Should we not rather plant as many as we can secure, this autumn [she’s writing in July 1956], in the anticipation of great white bushes a few years hence?’

Another favoured shrub was Abelia triflora. ‘It flowers in June, grows to the size of what we used to call Syringa [Philadelphus, above], and is smothered in white, funnel-shaped flowers with the strongest scent of Jasmine … do plant Cytisus Battandieri.

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