Country life
Getting one's priorities right
Leanda de Lisle
What is more important, your garden or your children? Should we have gone to the Chelsea Flower Show last week, or held my eldest son's right hand while his left was being operated on? I telephoned the boy to find out how strongly he felt about having his parents at his sick bed. Being a teenager he is only able to communicate in grunts, but I thought I detected indifference and that was enough. The garden had won.
`You don't win any gold medals for par- enting, do you?' my son's godmother com- mented. I was a little surprised by her attitude. This is the woman who left an important film shoot in Europe because she didn't trust her daily to water her toma- 'You're not in Manhattan now, son. Just give old Tom his light and bitter.' to plants. 'I've posted him a magazine and a box of chocolates,' I squirmed. 'Somehow that makes it worse,' she replied. I could see that perhaps it did. Therefore, instead of taking the train to Chelsea we chose to drive, which would allow us to visit my bro- ken child later in the day. The sun shone as we arrived and we took advantage of it by making our way to the garden sets first.
There was much that I liked about the
Daily Telegraph's minimalist medal winner. But standing amongst a vocal crowd I found myself in the minority — and I'm afraid that even I thought the wired walls quite hideous. If they didn't inspire me, however, something else did. In the garden entitled 'Homage to Le Notre' by Tom Stu- art-Smith we saw clipped box filled with wild flowers, a combination that would look perfect at the front of our house. The mixture of the formal and the informal, the structured and the natural is exactly what we have here already, although not by design.
Our home has a very English wonIcY- ness. The house is classical in style, but built on uneven ground, with garden and trees off-centre to it. You can do anything with it except impose strict order. This, at least, gives one full rein when it comes to shopping opportunities. At Chelsea we have long patronised Capital Garden Prod- ucts, who do the most beautiful faux lead and terracotta. This year they have pro' duced some wonderful mogul tanks and we can't wait to acquire some. Of course, given the cost of all the new bedding, we may have to. But not for as long as we are going to have to wait for Bulbeck Foundry's real lead `River God'.
This life-size figure is exactly what mY
father has always said we need for our water feature, but at maybe £18,000 (it hasn't been priced yet) it's better suited to the pocket of our neighbour, Lottery Lee', We comforted ourselves by gathering piaT catalogues from the stands under Chelsea 5 new, airy hangers, until, weighted down, we ground to a halt in front of the annual mas- terpiece that is the Sutton vegetable smut'. They were doing excellent business strtee . all sorts of people are now growing theld own vegetables rather than risk eating W bought from supermarkets. 'GM?' I asked' Yes, that was a concern. The salesman said he understood why people were worried about genes boil swapped from one species to another' although he thought their fears were exag,, gerated. I told him I'd read that we share 80 per cent of our genes with bananas {and
' more in some cases, I felt sure). He in turn ..,
told me that he'd gone to a growers' cord ference where a doctor had stood up an e said that no one had mentioned that Wed have been consuming genetically modtfl„t, antibiotics for the past 12 years. `Fascin.f: ing. Where are the headlines about that led wondered. But talk of drugs had relnow Peter that we were due at the hospital. ,0 I had telephoned the school matron find out where to go, but I'd dialled the number underneath by mistake. It was that of Today presenter John Humphrys. 'Hello,' he growled. 'Is that matron?' I asked, root- ed to the spot. 'No,' he boomed back. 'So sorry,' I said, too embarrassed to admit that it was me. I worry that he might have thought it was a kinky call (if you are read- ing this, John, I'm still really sorry). Any- way, although I didn't dare risk another Matron Humphrys experience, we eventual- 1Y found my son with his arm hanging in a sling from the ceilirig. I sat on his feet to see if his arm would fly up. It didn't. 'How are You?' I asked. He grunted, but I detected some satisfaction that we were there.
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