“Recreating The Delos Garden at Sissinghurst”
In 2014 Dan Pearson was appointed a Garden Advisor to the National Trust at Sissinghurst. For the next three years he made an annual visit to meet with Head Gardener Troy Scott-Smith acting as a sounding board for his evolving plans to return the period romance and sense of place to the gardens. In 2018 Troy asked Dan if he could provide more concrete help in re-imagining Delos. This area of the garden had originally been envisaged by Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West as an homage to the Greek island of that name which they had fallen in love with while on holiday in 1935. However, due to the garden’s north-facing aspect and heavy Wealden clay soil it had rapidly become a shady woodland garden quite at odds with the couple’s sun-baked vision. Working closely with Sissinghurst’s curatorial and gardening teams, Dan and his design studio gained a deeper understanding of the original intentions behind the garden, and proposed design solutions to make the site work including raked terracing to harvest as much sunshine as possible and a free-draining soil mix to give the planting the conditions it would require to thrive. The results of an earlier field study trip to Delos by two assistant gardeners provided first hand evidence of the plant species endemic to the island. Before starting work on the planting plans Dan visited Mediterranean plant specialist, Olivier Filippi, at his nursery in the south of France to get his guidance on those species best adapted to British growing conditions. Work on remaking the Delos garden started in spring 2019 and took a year to complete. In this talk Dan explains the process of reimagining this garden for contemporary visitors, the challenges involved and the success it has had since it was completed.