Brianne Turczynski

Who was Vita Sackville-West?

Brianne Turczynski — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 09:01:33 GMT

‘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
Published in 2014

I’m a book lover. I’m a little obsessed with books, actually. 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.

Photo credit: Me. My copy the book on a tray made in France.

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 degree. 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.

My garden.

My garden years ago when it first began. Everything here has since died and was replaced by other flowers, mostly sunflowers and poppies. It’s severely overgrown today. Time for a transformation.

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Something I Noticed About Hollyhocks

Brianne Turczynski — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:01:59 GMT

“The narrowest crack in a path or paved terrace will surprisingly send up the finest seedling; I have known even such large unwanted subjects as delphiniums and hollyhocks to make the attempt. The reason, obviously, is that they never suffer from either excessive moisture or excessive drought, the stone preserves such moisture as is in the soil but prevents the soggy puddling consequent on a heavy rainfall; furthermore, it protects from the scorching sun and consequent wilting which demands the watering can.”

-Vita Sackville-West, A Joy of Gardening, 1958

Photo of my hollyhocks. Credit: Me

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For the next 72 weeks, I’ll be dipping into my Miss Sissinghurst archives, sharing the garden blog posts I wrote in honor of Vita Sackville-West a few years back. Since the hollyhock is such a nostalgic flower, I thought I would introduce this endeavor by starting with a post about them. These posts will be for the garden enthusiast as well as the poet and just about anyone who loves to write and observe this beautiful world of creation.

I planted my first hollyhocks as full-grown plants from the greenhouse about eight years ago. They were gorgeous then, and the years that followed were the same as they kept coming from seed. Then suddenly they stopped. The last few years I have had no hollyhocks grow except for a few sorry-looking plants that eventually caught the rust fungus and died. I gave up on them. But look! I can’t believe my hollyhocks this year, growing almost right out of the garden path. They like the warmth from the stone and lack of water there. I didn’t plant them or do anything at all. They just surprised me out of nowhere, growing from seeds dropped years ago and forgotten.

Every year when my family and I head up north to the cabin for the Fourth of July, my mom and I marvel at the hollyhocks that grow wild from 100-year-old seeds in random places around the downtown area of Oscoda. These plants, growing against old barns and buildings right out of neglected parking lots, are time capsules of the historic gardens that used to exist there, long forgotten and paved over. So as the hollyhock is a time capsule carrying history and nostalgia, I allowed the magnificence of this flower to take me back to the days when I sat at my little blue laptop computer years ago and typed out weekly blog posts about gardening based on the writings of Vita Sackville-West, my gardening muse and mentor.

Photo Credit: me again.

I realize now, based on what Ms. Sackville-West wrote above, that the reason my hollyhocks died out years ago was probably because I watered the area excessively to make happy my other flowers. I had forgotten or did not know that the hollyhock thrives on drought and neglect.

Quite an empowering thought, to thrive on drought and neglect. And to be such a strong plant too, in such conditions, is a thing of marvel. The hollyhock blossoms all by itself. Alone. It doesn’t care who sees it. It is not concerned about its followers or who admires its beauty. Instead, it is there, year after year, growing in the same spot in the sun out of its own nature of generosity.

The hollyhock offers us an important lesson, to live and move toward love in the world without concerning ourselves with negative opinions or expectations of our communities, our families, or friends. I’ve noticed most expectations come from negative mindsets that are based on a person’s fears or doubts. Sometimes people will try to give us their fear and doubt wrapped neatly in what looks like “care and concern”. But they are actually trying to pass along the burdens they have been carrying from their families, their neglect, their droughts. They didn’t thrive in those conditions. Humans aren’t meant to. We are not like hollyhocks, perhaps. Under these conditions, people wither, never truly blossom, and usually die in some fashion.

Of course, it’s always great to have someone in our lives that is truly supportive and for this, hollyhocks have the ground in which their roots are stuck strong. For those of us without anyone in our corner, we can start there. We can ask ourselves: what are my roots? In what do I ground myself? The answer will provide your natural source of strength. Here is where you might even find a more supportive community. Blossom alone if you have to (for now) but remember you have the pavement for your footing and if you can stay strong in how you move in the world and in who you are and in what you believe, little bees will eventually come to rest in your petals.

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