Sissinghurst Castle is a bustle of visitors and, on our second visit, the gardens have a degree of familiarity; the shape and juxtaposition of the different compartments, the various views and the patterns of colour more readily comprehended.

Mock Tudor

Italian Renaissance

Medieval

English cottage garden

Black and white images throw the place straight back to the 1930s when it all began, and show the dramatic structures, the contrasts in form and the classical perspectives.

The garden compartments are laid out like different parts of the brain and the garden could be mistaken for a cross section or even a phrenology chart. Hot and bold for emotion and cool and controlled for detached decision making? Whatever the motive for the design, the gardens are wildly beautiful within their crumbling brick and clipped yew straightjackets.

Warm bricks and hot colours

The cottage garden

The entrance porch – still life

Epaulettes on a cardoon (Cynara cardunculus)

Ice whites and cool colours

The white garden

The entrance to the white garden

Spring greens

Brilliant fashion statement

Voluptuous close-ups and sleek views to the vanishing point