In April 1930, a young socialite - cheated of her inheritance by the laws of primogeniture - walked into a Kentish ruin; no electricity, no drains, a farmyard of "squalor and slovenly disorder"... and spent what money she had to buy it.

Thirty years later, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson had made what her biographer called her "one magnificent act of creation" - ten garden rooms enclosed in old brick and yew; a tower for her books; and a Spring Garden that Harold called his "life's work".

This week, Geoff and Rory return to Sissinghurst; to the Tudor courtier who built the tower, the French prisoners who gave it its name, the marriage that conceived a garden... and the magical moment in April when the Lime Walk blossoms.

A spring gardens special - please join us!

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