RHS Chelsea Flower Show has once again returned to the sprawling grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea - but this year, it's welcomed a particularly special garden.
As Felicity Kendal sits on a bench carved from a single oak, all around her this year’s Chelsea Flower Show is bursting into bloom. Soil-laden diggers trundle past, plants are heaved into position and the faint sound of house music floats on the pollen-soaked air.
Amid it all, Felicity is serene: dark eyes intent and blonde blow-dry immaculate. Her secret? 'A lot of cream,' she laughs.
'I do go to the gym, but you need a lot of cream. And I insist on a vodka and tonic. In that order.'
For the 78-year-old actress, a Chelsea local, this year’s show is particularly special: it welcomes the first garden from the charity founded by the then Prince of Wales in 1976, for which Felicity has been an ambassador for over 35 years.
© Damien HockeyThe King's Trust
The King’s Trust Show Garden: Seeding Success, celebrates the “potential and resilience” of the nearly one million young people it has supported for almost 50 years.
'I’ve always thought it was the most wonderful thing,' Felicity says of the King’s Trust. 'Not many charities have this central idea of offering somebody the ability to become independent of charity by giving them the means to be self-sufficient.'
Its ethos also resonates with this star of stage and screen, whose parents ran a repertory company in India. Her family moved from Birmingham when she was seven and she returned to the UK as a teenager. 'I had absolutely nothing when I started out at 17,' she says. 'And no qualifications except that I had been taught stagecraft by my parents. I tuned into that idea very much, that it’s possible to give people confidence so that they can then have a life that is the one they choose.'
Looking back to when she first became attached to the charity, she remembers: 'The thing to me that is just so lovely was the link with this very young Prince who was talking to trees – which we should all do – and at last people understand it’s a good idea.
'A lot of people thought: "Oh, this is a bit of a worry that he’s talking about nature, we should be talking about something much more serious." Yet now, there’s nothing more serious. Ultimately, he’s got it right. Being in touch with nature is no longer an airy fairy, Mother Earth kind of thing. It’s actually a great way of giving you solace. Talking to the young ones who are working on this garden, it helps, it nourishes, it calms you down.'
The 'young ones' working on it are thrilled: Felicity had turned up on site with a big bag of pastries – 'because gardening makes you hungry' – before sitting down for intent conversation with them.
The Good Life
Just as the King was ahead of his time in the 1970s, so too was another British institution: The Good Life. This April marked 50 years since the first episode of the self-sufficiency BBC sitcom that brought viewers Richard Briers and Felicity as Tom and Barbara Good, with Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington as neighbours Margo and Jerry Leadbetter.
© Getty Images'I remember the joy of just getting up in the morning and knowing that I was going to do this job with these people, from the producer to the make-up artist,' she says with a smile. 'It was just a joy – and it was a gift. Nobody thought it would do well until it started going out [on TV] and then people just fell in love with it.
'People liked it because it had a bit of a message: get some friends and simplify.'
On screen, she was married to Richard, while her real-life husband (her second) was theatre director Michael Rudman. They tied the knot in 1983 and divorced in 1994 before later reuniting – though never remarrying – until his death in March 2023.
© Getty ImagesReflecting on life in the wake of his loss, Felicity, too, advocates for keeping life simple.
'I think one of the misconceptions is everybody’s got a wonderful lifestyle: they’ve got the wonderful car, and they’ve got all the right boxes that they can tick, and look at the picture on Instagram. And that’s not actually true. And I think it’s very comforting when you realise that deep down, without all the rubbish, stripped down to a nightie, you feel the same.
'We don’t realise how much positive energy we can get by going outside,' she reflects. 'I mean, there are self-help books out there, but go for a walk. That will start you off. Just look at the flowers. Have a potted plant and see how it gets depressed if you don’t nurture it.
'If I’m ever upset about anything, I go outside,' she adds. 'Just going out, getting some plants and putting them in, something switches off. Or maybe it switches on a kind of serotonin.'
