PRINCESS MARGARET toured the Chelsea Flower Show by wheelchair yesterday, making her first public appearance since leaving hospital in January after suffering her second stroke.
The Queen and Prince Philip headed the VIP guest list and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, travelled around in her golf cart painted in blue and gold candy-stripe racing colours. A stopping point for the royal party was the Carpet Garden, where the Prince of Wales showed off the design he devised with Michael Miller for Clifton Nurseries based on Turkish carpets at Highgrove.
Princess Alexandra and Sir Angus Ogilvy accompanied Crown Prince Naruhito, heir to Japan's Chrysanthemum throne, who was attending the show during his official visit to Britain. Crown Prince Naruhito visited the Japanese garden sponsored by The Daily Telegraph and spent several minutes talking to Prof Masao Fukuhara, the designer. Blue was the colour at the show, with both the Queen and the princess in similar tones.
Blue was in the plantings, the awnings or the ceramics of the most contemporary gardens. Charlie Dimmock, the television gardening presenter, and Elle Macpherson, the model, were also in blue. Michael Portillo, candidate for Kensington and Chelsea, was true blue in another sense - though he had no intention of turning the visit into an electioneering platform.
Establishing the theme, a brash turquoise blue had been chosen for the awnings of the circ Garden, a modish piece of architecture, water and plants striking like gardens created on television and tipped for a prize by Miss Dimmock of the BBC's Ground Force.
Her joint choice for the best of show was the aggressively modern corporate space for a school, hospital or office, called A Garden for Learning, designed by Johnny Woodford and Cleve West and sponsored by Merrill Lynch, overall sponsors of the show. Alan Titchmarsh, Miss Dimmock's Ground Force colleague, backed the cool naturalistic meadow planting of the Laurent Perrier/Harpers and Queen Garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith.
This garden - which was attracting the shortest odds yesterday - has blue, and the other colour of Chelsea this year, wine red, in its astrantias, hardy geraniums, borage and bleeding heart. As a centrepiece the garden has a pond and the costliest wine-cooler in Chelsea, a minimalist blue-red sandstone terrace with integral bench and, beside it, a waterfilled trench filled with bottles of champagne.
Sir Roy Strong, garden designer and author, preferred The Daily Telegraph's garden, a water and rockscape with naturalistic planting, co-sponsored and designed by the Team for the Japanese Garden 2001, one of the few gardens with - a few iris aside - no blue to be seen. "It's by far the greatest designer. Everywhere you look in it, it composes itself perfectly."
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Charles pays tribute to cancer nurses(Ananova)
Four nurses who care for people with cancer have been hailed by Prince Charles for their tireless commitment.
He called them the "backbone" of the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity as he awarded them Nurses of the Year in a presentation at St James's Palace.
The nurses - from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - were chosen from more than 4,000 Marie Curie nurses nationwide.
They will act as ambassadors for their colleagues, raising awareness and funds for the charity, which combined home and hospice nursing with research.
The winners were Catherine Le Roy (England), Hazel Graham (Scotland), Dawn Desbois (Wales) and Anne Coyle (Northern Ireland).
The Prince commented: "I wish Catherine, Hazel, Dawn and Anne every success as award winners in promoting the work of their colleagues to the wider public.
"The presence of a Marie Curie nurse in the home makes a tremendous difference to both patient and their carers.
"The majority of people suffering from cancer would like to be cared for in the comfortable and familiar surroundings of their own home. Marie Curie nurses make that possible."