Listing bid for garden treasure
THE owners of the Sunken Garden at White Lodge-on-the-cliff, Roedean, East Sussex, are racing to list it and protect it from possible development. One of the finest surviving examples of a sunken garden created by Sir Edwin Lutyens, it is thought to have been planted by Gertrude Jekyll. Sir Edwin designed it for his close friend Lady Victoria Sackville (1862–1936), who recorded in her diaries the day that the COUNTRY LIFE photographer shot this image, May 18, 1927.
The application is supported by The Lutyens Trust and by Adam Nicolson, grandson of Vita Sackville-west, whose father said that the sunken garden was the inspiration for the herb garden at Sissinghurst, but the final piece of the jigsaw—jekyll’s planting plan—remains elusive.
If you have any information that might help speed the listing process, please contact kittyedwardsjones@yahoo.com