Linda’s grandparents Charles and Kate at Reston House in Kew Village

Charles was Head Gardener of Reston House in Kew Village from 1906 to 1935, and his story is told in the 1913 garden created by Pennard Plants (owners Chris Smith and Mike Milligan will be dressed for the part at RHS Chelsea). Roots is designing and building the 21st Century inner-city community garden over the wall.

Linda’s husband Tony’s illustration for Chelsea

Charles’s  potting shed is recreated, complete with his own five tined garden fork, tarred string and roofed with shingles given to Roots and Shoots by The Prince of Wales. Pictures of him and his working and family life are on display, testimony to another era.   Propped outside is Gladys, Linda’s trusty sit-up-and-beg bike from her student days at RBG Kew, a wrap of rhubarb in the basket.

“In a large garden such as Charles Russell ran, not a leaf would have been out of place and hours of back-breaking work would have gone into providing produce for the Big House table,” says Chris Smith “Our 2013 world is a very different place. Charles would probably have been surprised at the vegetables we grow nowadays and have raised his  eyebrows to see them bursting out of recycled cooking oil tins, galvanised water tanks and builders’ bags, rather than lined up in perfectly planted rows of cabbages, carrots and kale.”

In 21st century South London a less elegant spirit prevails.  The garden wall has been sprayed with graffiti, the ground turned over first to a car park, then a carwash and finally abandoned. But the local community is taking it back, fresh vegetables now thrive, bees are buzzing and a three wheeled bicycle is parked ready to deliver the day’s harvest to people living nearby. Alpine strawberries and marigolds scramble all over the green roofed bike shed; it won’t be long before many kinds of wildlife find their way here.

David has designed the handbill for Chelsea

All the plants in both gardens are edible and grown from heritage seeds and plants cultivated in Pennard Plants’ Victorian walled garden.  They have been tended by Roots and Shoots’ horticultural trainees, who endured an anxious few weeks before spring arrived and the broad and runner beans, kale and coloured lettuces started to get into Chelsea form. “Apart from the seeds, everything else has been begged or borrowed,” says Linda Phillips. “The bill will come in under £300 – or £3 18/2 in old money.  Something of a Chelsea rarity!”

“A Moment In Time” by Pennard Plants, in association with Roots and Shoots, will be on GP/B10 in the Grand Pavilion at RHS Chelsea.