The garden was first opened to the paying public for two days in mid-1938. Thereafter, the opening hours were gradually increased. Despite her love of privacy, Sackville-West came to enjoy greatly her encounters with the visitors, known as "shillingses" on account of the entrance fees they deposited in a bowl at the gate. She described her relationship with them in a 1939 article in the "New Statesman": "between them and myself a particular form of courtesy survives, a gardener's courtesy". Nicolson was less welcoming. Sackville-West's "Observer" articles raised awareness of the garden; Scott-James records photographic articles in "Gardening Illustrated," "Vogue", and "Picture Post", and notes consequently that "increasingly paying visitors poured into Sissinghurst, coming in thousands in the course of a summer".