The charms of Chelsea
Ursula Buchan
Tdon't mind admitting it, it was a rather 1clever wheeze. I managed to acquire a ticket for Press Day at Chelsea — the Monday, you know — by bringing up a plant for an award at the show. I asked my poor sister Pam to cut an armful of lilac from the Gatehouse border, and I took it up with me in the train. (I left Pam at home, by the way, because the compost heaps needed turning urgently — I am not sure she would have enjoyed the trip, in any event, since the Underground makes her queasy.) It is true the judges wrote rather a terse comment on the card, saying that this plant first received the Award of Merit in 1911, but how was I to know that?
Anyway, the important thing was that I was in on the Monday, able to move around as easily as can be, although the place was rather heaving with scruffy journalists like that woman, Alison Buchanan her name is, who came to interview me once and was such a bore. Generally, though. I had a lovely day. First I had a word with the president, whom I bumped into (literally!!). He said not to worry; he was fine and it was surely his fault. He asked me if I were enjoying the show. Such lovely manners, But, there again, you know where you are with a baronet, as Arthur used to say, and he should have known? And, of course, if there is one thing better than a baronet, it is a baronet with a garden of magnolias and camellias to die for. Unfortunately, he is rather tied up next spring, he tells me. So sad.
After that, I dodged the showers and went to look at the Show Gardens. Goodness me, how extraordinary. One of them was apparently trying to depict a coral reef, using cabbages, primulas and proteas. Not sure it worked, although the wire octopus was rather jolly. The catalogue said: 'The garden translates tropical subaquascape into terrestrial forms. .. ' Well, who would have thought it?
As for the garden designed by the little man who makes carpet-sweepers somewhere in the Far East! You know the one I mean. He used to live near us, but has now bought an enormous house practically on the hard shoulder of the M4. For some reason, there was no green foliage in the garden at all, so it was all purple hedges and grey-blue cypresses, and as mournful as Arthur's funeral. It was called the Wrong Garden. Perhaps next year they will try to get it Right!!
But I must say I was cheered by how well the gentry did this year. You can't keep 'em down, however much our so-called 'government' tries: Xa Tollemache, Tom
Stuart-Smith, Christopher BradleyHole. . . it was very cheering. I especially loved dear Tom's garden with that 'flowery mead' of tellima and white honesty, Iris sibirica (such as we have here round the lake) and Geranium 'Johnson's Blue', although how he got his Cornus kousa to flower so early I will never know. It may look a bit grassy later in the year, I suppose, but at least he avoided putting dahlias next to apple trees in blossom as they did in the Sexuality Garden, or whatever it was called. I hope the Members keep their notebooks firmly in the pockets of their pack-a-macs tomorrow, because they ain't going to learn very much from that one. By the way, Christopher told me that the glass cube pavilion in the Abu Dhabi Sheikh's garden was inspired by the structure of the salt molecule, and symbolises desalination. Well, the things you see when you haven't a gun, as Nanny Rakehandle used to say!
Quite a number of one's chums were there (goodness knows how!) and it was easy enough to avoid the so-called 'celebrities' — Lionel Blair, Christopher Timothy, Jerry Hall, Ringo Starr and the like. They are not celebrities in my book, I can tell you, although I was pleased to nod to the Bishop of London. I am sorry I never glimpsed Michael (Hezza, of course!) who is usually there, he tells me. I wanted to tease him about the euro, about which he is always rather boot-faced, and ask him why there are no flowers in his garden!!
Strangely, the sweetest people on Press Day were the garden photographers, I thought. Such poppets. 1 talked to dear Andrew Lawson who was on the top of a step-ladder snapping away. I am uncertain quite how he fell off but he smiled very sweetly and said he always got muddy when he was photographing. He promised faithfully that he would come and snap the delphiniums when they are at their best in the walled garden. . . Between you and me, when he comes, I'm going to get him to take a picture of the two Westies in the wheelbarrow as well. Very naughty of me, I know, but wouldn't it be heavenly?'
Guinevere, Lady Rakehandle was on the telephone to a very old and dear friend, who sadly doesn't get out much any more.
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