Vita Sackville-West died of abdominal cancer at Sissinghurst Castle on 2 June 1962, aged 70.
Vita Sackville-West died on 2 June 1962 at Sissinghurst Castle, the Kent estate whose gardens she had spent over thirty years creating with her husband Harold Nicolson. She succumbed to abdominal cancer at the age of 70.
By the time of her death, she was recognized both as an accomplished poet and novelist—author of works including The Edwardians, All Passion Spent, and the Hawthornden Prize–winning The Land—and as one of Britain's foremost garden writers and designers, thanks to her long-running column in The Observer and the enduring fame of Sissinghurst's White Garden.
Her death marked the end of an extraordinary life that had defied the conventions of her aristocratic upbringing: she had loved women passionately (most famously Violet Trefusis and Virginia Woolf), inspired Woolf's gender-bending novel Orlando (1928), and lived an openly unconventional marriage while remaining a respected public figure. She was buried in the Sackville family vault at Withyham, Sussex.
Following her death, Sissinghurst Castle Garden passed into the care of the National Trust in 1967, ensuring her horticultural legacy would be preserved and enjoyed by millions of visitors, and cementing her lasting influence on English garden design.