Who was Vita Sackville-West: A teacher of transformation

‘The place [Sissinghurst Castle], when I first saw it on a spring day… caught instantly at my heart and my imagination. I fell in love at first sight…It was Sleeping Beauty’s Garden: but a garden crying out for rescue.’ Standing in the middle of the vegetable patch looking up to the Tower, she turned to twelve-year-old Nigel and said, ‘I think we shall be happy in this place.’

-Vita Sackville-West & Sarah Raven
Sissinghurst: Vita Sackville-West and the Creation of a Garden
Copyright; 2014

I’m a book lover. Correction: I’m a little obsessed with books. People will hear this and ask me what I thought of the latest bestseller. I haven’t read any of them. I’m working my way up through time. When I finally get to today’s bestsellers they will be considered only a residue of our history. Like little creative bursts of the past, old and forgotten by most; just the way I like them.

This book, however, is pretty recent and a helpful guide to the life of Vita while she was living and gardening at Sissinghurst castle in Kent, England. It had its beginnings as a Saxon pig farm in the 1500s, then it was used as a prison for French prisoners later in its life. When Vita and her husband, Harold Nicholson, bought it in the 1930s it was run down by that time, and the gardens were heavily overgrown. Vita’s love for gardening began after she and Harold married and while they were living at Long Barn, another historic home in Kent where Vita began experimenting in the garden. She went on to host a garden radio show where her advice was then published in a variety of books. She was a poet as well as a novelist and journalist of sorts. Yet, most will only know her name because she was once the lover and long-time friend of the famed writer, Virginia Woolf.

I could feel what it must have been like for Vita to see Sissinghurst for the first time. She probably felt that she had done all she could do in the garden at Long Barn and wanted a new challenge. She was moved by the potential of Sissinghurst and not deterred or overwhelmed by its dilapidation. She knew she had the tools, the knowledge, and the gifts to take care of that place and to bring it into its full life.

It is a life well spent, I think, when we can look at something outside of ourselves and say, this is worth my time and energy and even money. I have the gifts, the tools, the knowledge, to bring this person, this object, this institution, this garden back from the dead. I’m going to take a chance and try to fulfill this call. And the ‘thing’ we feel called to reanimate could be within ourselves too. We too are worth a transformation.

Seven years ago, I felt a call to ordained ministry. I’ve taken steps here and there to fulfill this call with my cradle Episcopal congregation, but something was off. No matter what I did for the church or how I offered myself, I always felt like I was on the outside looking in. So, after some thought I decided to start my journey fresh with the ELCA Lutheran church, and I finally applied to the Divinity School at Duke University to get my Master of Divinity. Because I, too, no matter my age, deserve something that will rattle my bones and make me question things and challenge me, shake me up even, so I can come together completely whole and completely myself. This is the weeding of my garden.

And this is what Vita did with her garden, she shook it up, torn it up, right up from its roots, transplanting what needed to be transplanted and throwing out what was not producing fruit. Then she put it all back together in such a way that it was more fruitful for her and the bees when she was finished. How can we use this metaphorically in our own lives? We are the garden, our households, our institutions, our communities. Where do we feel a call to help something or someone or ourselves feel whole again in this way? Where do we feel a tugging by the spirit of Love and Creation to create new life once more in something long dead or stagnant? What we love deserves this kind of attention.

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Brianne Turczynski is an award-winning author and educator in Michigan as well as the creator of Loving the Imperfect podcast. Her nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have appeared in various magazines and online news publications including Halcyone, 3288 Review, Sheepshead Review, Michigan Out-of-Doors, and Planet Detroit News. Her nonfiction, Detroit’s Lost Poletown: The Little Neighborhood that Touched a Nation was released with the History Press in 2021. Her forthcoming collection of poetry, Lake of Our Histories will be released with Finishing Line Press late in 2026. She attends Duke University’s Divinity School with plans to obtain her Master of Divinity degree. You can learn more about her by visiting her website, www.BrianneTurczynski.com