(10 May 2019)  
 
[From "The bittersweet history of the 'Englishwoman's garden' " by Robin Lane Fox]

I knew the succession at Kiftsgate since 1919: Heather Muir, her daughter Diany Binny and nowadays Diany’s daughter, Anne Chambers. I did not know how good the garden already was in the Muir years.....Nearly 30 years before the famous White Garden at Sissinghurst began, she had a white garden at Kiftsgate. ...The garden has been a haven for very rare plants, received as presents or cleverly acquired by one or other owner. There is far more to it than its most celebrated item, the wildly rampant white-flowered Rosa filipes Kiftsgate. Muir bought this monster of a rose in error in 1938. It is a viciously thorny scrambler, utterly unsuitable for smaller gardens and now nearly 60ft high and wide.