A Home Of Her Own

The Houses and Gardens of Vita Sackville-West
A literary, horticultural, and personal tour of the legendary writer and gardeners houses and gardens, the places that gave her work and her life a vital sense of self.

Born in 1892 at Knole, a Jacobeanpalace and treasure house, Vita diedseventyyears later at Sissinghurst,where she had created one ofEnglandsloveliest and most celebratedgardens. Throughout her life, she lived inextraordinary places,fascinated and inspired by their histories. An obsession with her ancestry and with Knolethe monumental house in which she grew upremained central throughout her life but which,as a woman and therefore inhibited by the law of the land, she had been prevented from inheriting.Immediatelyafter her fathers death Vita left Knoleforever,moving toLong Barn,just a couple of miles away. This new house, like Knole, albeit on a fraction of the scale, was an amalgam of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and