Country life
Shopping and flowering
Leanda de Lisle
We forgot to get tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show six months ago — or Whenever it was that we were supposed to get them — and by the time we remem- bered it was too late. I can't say this kept me awake at night, but when a talented designer friend raided the walled garden for plants to show at Chelsea I seized the opportunity to ask whether he had any, urn, spare tickets. He did, so we went down to London for what had been billed as 'the' fashion show of the season.
The train broke down for an hour and a half somewhere outside Luton, and the taxi the other end took about 40 minutes to get to Bond Street. I know it's nowhere near Chelsea, but we wanted to do a little shop- Ping first. I've been trying to get Peter to look less tweedy. Thus far he has grown a goatee that makes him look quite scarily like his conquistador ancestors and expressed an interest in a Nicole Farhi suit. His enthusiasm evaporated when he saw it all shiny on the peg, and lunch downstairs proved equally disappointing. My favourite shopping restaurant is definitely the one on the fifth floor of Harvey Nichols. It's about _asx atmoonspheric as Birmingh cheaper Nicole's, it's emptier and the food is better. Our shopping time after this mid-after- noon meal was restricted to a few minutes at Chanel. I had hoped to buy myself a pair of glass camellia earrings, but despite everything I proved to be ahead of time. The earrings weren't in yet. Still, it was worth the trip to see the window dummies dressed in moss and bark — an allusion, I assumed, to Chanel's new place in the World of garden design. The newspapers made much of 'ordinary gardeners' being fed up with fashion designers coming to Chelsea, trying to make out that gardening Was all about painting the fence purple and building ruined chapels on the lawn. But When I got to Chelsea I discovered that the Chanel garden was as classical and beauti- ful as one could hope. Arches of 20-year-old beech framed a lit- tle knot garden in white and een. The old ladies in their faded cotton dresses loved it. The only thing anyone could point to as modish was a small gilded statue that was the very epitome of understatement, next to the restored Albert Memorial. Else- Where, there was indeed a 'private chapel' garden of great ugliness and vulgarity. But if there was a fashion for anything it was for native English flowers, and that's where our plants came in.
George Carter's Christie's garden was designed to be green, if not in colour then in outlook. Our Aaron's rod, St John's wort, seakale, figwort, geranium phaeum, comfrey and Jacob's ladder were there to attract insects. The insects would then attract mammals and, I suppose, birds for there was a very large tower waiting to house them in the centre of the garden.
The Quarryman's garden, created for a butterfly conservation charity, also used a lot of wonderful wild flowers, but my favourite garden was Arabella Lennox Boyd's. Water poured down a polished steel sculpture into a narrow canal that widened to a pool before going down some steps into a lower, smaller pool. It was almost Mogul as well as distinctly modern, with an otherworldliness that pricked the heart.
The marquee, on the other hand, was the same old hell it always is, with crowds of people elbowing each other for a view of the latest petunia. I had asked Flick, the gardener, if there was anything special she wanted me to get her, and she'd expressed a longing for unusual foxgloves. She'd also revealed herself to be an unreconstructed marxist, but I decided not to hold that against her, and, after much kicking and shoving, I emerged from the marquee with several packets of seeds for her.
From the moment you enter the grounds of the Chelsea Flower Show, where you are greeted by thin-legged ladies rattling tins for the Army Benevolent Fund, you are aware you are in a special place. One full of people who work humbly to make their bit of earth a better and more beautiful place. But it has to be said, they look pretty frightful. I hope Karl Largerfeld will come to Chelsea again next year and impress them with his twin-sets, as much as he has with his garden.
'There are times when I think a saviour of souls can be hell to live with.'
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