I can keep warm?” Besides it would be such fun! She knows, because she has done the loop-de-loop with him before. Vic is relieved he can skip it this time when he finally sees the Prince’s car arriving on the field. Instead of performing the loop-de-loop, he circles once more so Rosemary can wave to the assembled crowd below before he lands. Beautifully dressed in a flaming red suit and purple scarf designed by her friend, Sir Hardy Amies, designer to the Queen, she is helped out of the cockpit onto the wing, her hair a bit windblown but not nearly as mussed as it would have been after a loop-de-loop. She alights from the plane beaming into Prince Charles’s open arms.1
The Prince stays on for half an hour or so talking with the guests, then leaves so the party can continue without his intimidating presence. Inside an old engine shed, Rupert Golby, one of Rosemary’s former gardeners who has gone on to his own success as a garden designer, has decorated the interior to evoke a charming potting shed. Antique watering cans filled with rich red amaryllis, bouquets of red anemones and blue iris, balls of garden twine, boxwood topiary, and apple tree branches adorn the tables covered with red-and-white checkered tablecloths, flanked by red cloth folding chairs. Each place has a small flower pot containing a napkin and sprig of rosemary. Scenes from Rosemary’s own famous gardens at Barnsley House hang on the walls. Rosemary always loves a good party and this is just one of several that will follow in other venues to celebrate her eightieth birthday.
For all her fame around the world, Rosemary certainly cherished most her work for Prince Charles and their special friendship. In his foreword in a memorial booklet after her death in 2001, Prince Charles wrote, “I feel so fortunate to have known dear Rosemary. It was a lucky turn of fate that I moved to Gloucestershire … and found that one of its treasures lived not far down the road. As a result, I was able to pick the determined brain of a true plantswoman.… She transmitted endless advice and suggestions, interspersed with her inimitable enthusiasm and affection. There are corners of my garden which will be “forever Rosemary” and an abiding impression I have of her to this day is of her climbing out of the cockpit of a very small aeroplane for her eightieth birthday – dashing, determined, incorrigible, and loving as ever.”2
Rosemary was born on the winter solstice, December 21, 1918, just after the close of the First World War to a respectable upper middle class English family. But for her arrival on a propitious date, it would have been hard to predict the arc of a life that would bring her to worldwide fame. It seemed much more likely that she would grow up to live her life as one of countless anonymous conventional country ladies with a nice house and garden, who devoted herself to raising her family and supporting her church. Yet when Rosemary died in 2001, lengthy obituaries paying her tribute appeared in all the major newspapers, including the Times of London and the New York Times, as well as a full page in the less than horticulturally inclined Economist. Some speculated her birth on the winter solstice was prophetic; the stars would align for the rest of her life.
When Rosemary arrived, the war to end all wars had just ended. The English way of life had already begun to change as the gentry learned to make do without the servants lost to the war effort and England began recovering from the devastating loss of a generation of young men. The flu pandemic was also taking its toll on the population, with more than one hundred million deaths around the world. Born into a military family, Rosemary Isabel Baird Sandilands was the youngest of four children of Prescott Sandilands, an officer in the Royal Marines, and Gladys Murton, a former actress nicknamed “Slugs.” The pampered baby of the family, Rosemary joined the company of her older brother, Pat, named for her father, who was seven years older; Francis, who arrived two years after Pat; and her sister Christina, born a year after that. The gap of four years before Rosemary arrived was due, one would guess, to the intervening war years.
Rosemary adored her father and often talked of him later in her life. Prescott Sandilands was handsome and charming, but not very practical. His military salary was barely sufficient to raise and educate his four children in a style deemed appropriate to their social class. Finances were stretched, but Rosemary’s mother, a strong and intelligent woman, somehow managed it all even though the family was always short of money. Her friend and eventual sister-in-law, Gillian Lady Sandilands, observed that she “brought up all those children, found them all places at school. She was marvelous with them and she was very bright. I think that is where Rosemary gets her brains from.”
In many ways, Rosemary took after her actress-mother, inheriting her quick intelligence and her striking ice-blue eyes. Although she rarely talked much about her mother or their relationship, later in her life she did contrast her mother with her father. “My father had impeccable manners, but he wasn’t a great do’er. My mother was a great do’er.… My mother was a great influence on me.”3 Rosemary would certainly prove to be a “do’er.”
More often it was her father she recalled. But then Rosemary would always prefer the company of men. Her father must have cut quite a dashing figure in his officer’s uniform, and Rosemary was clearly proud of him. Military life caused the Sandilands family to move around, so Rosemary spent her early childhood familiar with various Royal Marine barracks. She said, “I have vivid memories of the band practicing on the parade grounds. Every time I hear a military band, I feel they’re playing for me.”4 Something akin to her father’s military discipline would be a fundamental trait of Rosemary’s adult character.
When she was ten, her father retired from the Royal Marines with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He settled the family down in the North of England at Nortoft House, in Guilsborough, Northamptonshire. Life changed dramatically for the young Rosemary, especially when she graduated from her bicycle to her first pony. Horses would become a passion for the rest of her life; she would grow into a skilled and fearless rider and a devoted member of the local hunt.
Shortly after the move to Northamptonshire, Rosemary and her sister were sent away to board at Eversley School in Folkestone, Kent, where they qualified for scholarship aid; it helped that their mother and aunt had gone there in the 1890s. Pat, the eldest son, embarked on a military career like his father and also qualified for financial support for his education at Willington. Francis, the second son, was the beneficiary of the generosity of an aunt who paid for his tuition at Eton as her own son, who had intended to go there, had died tragically young.
Rosemary spent nine years at the Eversley School and admitted that she had almost no interest in gardening. The school was very traditional. All the girls wore uniforms with white crisp collars and striped ties. Visiting ladies came properly attired in hats and gloves. There, she was “trained not to waste good time. There was this amazing feeling of discipline and we didn’t fight it. It was part of life.”5
Rosemary devoted her energies to her schoolwork and athletics. “I loved playing games – tennis, lacrosse, netball, even ping-pong – which I regarded as a due reward after geography and science lessons.”6 Her competitive spirit was already apparent. By twelve, she had won a pony competition, and at sixteen, she won the Kent County Girls Single Championship in tennis. A year later, she lost in the finals due to “too much partying. My family did not allow me to be seriously competitive, but it was fun, and a great honour later to be allowed to play for the county.”
Despite her competitive nature and drive, Rosemary would always remain a product of the conventions and expectations of her generation and class. In her school years, she did not start out following the most predictable path for a young woman. Instead, her “one ambition was to go to college and study mathematics, the subject I most enjoyed,” an area of study by no means an easy or obvious choice for women. At that time, very few women would have even thought of seeking a college degree. But Rosemary was a bright student and her record was sufficiently impressive to cause the headmistress to be “generous” and send her “weekly to a tutor at Southampton University, who taught me enough to get me a place at University College, London.”7
In 1937, Rosemary enrolled at University College and moved in with her parents who had left Northamptonshire
