London, three weeks in Chelsea

A late-winter day in Richmond

One of my favorite days took us out of the center. It was one of those cold, bright Saturdays at the end of winter when the whole city seems to decide at once to go outside. We took the District line from Sloane Square to Kew and walked into the glasshouses with our coats still buttoned.

The orchid festival was on, built that year around the plants of China, and the Princess of Wales Conservatory was dense with it: orchids climbing frames and spilling out of baskets, color in every direction after weeks of gray. But what stayed with me was the Palm House. Built in the 1840s, all iron ribs and curved glass, it still does what it was meant to do. You step in from a February morning into wet green heat and palms that reach the roof, and for a second you understand exactly how a Victorian visitor must have felt.

From there we went on to Petersham Nurseries for lunch. We chose the casual café, set in a glasshouse full of plants and old furniture, and busy with families who'd had the same idea we had. Warm scones, a slice of quiche, a pot of tea, and the low noise of people glad to be out in the sun. Afterward we wandered the shop and the potting benches, where the first plants of spring were coming in: bulbs in terracotta, branches just starting to bud. I left with a list of things I wanted for a garden I don't have yet. Next time I'll book a long lunch in the restaurant.

Petersham began as the nursery beside Petersham House. Gael and Francesco Boglione moved into the house in 1997, and over the years that followed turned the old nursery into a garden, a kitchen and a shop shaped by the family's Italian and Australian roots, later led by their daughter Lara. You can feel that it grew slowly. Nothing about it looks planned by a committee.

A few minutes' walk away is Ham House, built in 1610 and made into what it is by Elizabeth Murray, later Duchess of Lauderdale, one of the more formidable women of the seventeenth century. Inside are the carved Great Stairs, Lely portraits, lacquer from China and Japan, and a small Green Closet that is the only complete one of its kind left in the country. Outside, the front lawn was covered in purple flowers, the first real sign of spring we'd seen. We walked back along the Thames into Richmond, past rowing boats pulled up on the bank, dog walkers and families, with a glimpse of Richmond Park on the way, and took the train home to Chelsea in the dark. It felt like a day in an English village that happened to be inside London.

Pimlico Road

Pimlico Road, between Belgravia and Chelsea, is half a day for anyone who loves a well-made room. I went from Jamb, with its stone chimneypieces and hanging lanterns, to the quiet, pale rooms at Rose Uniacke, to Plain English for kitchens that look as if they've always been there, to the antiques at Howe, and on to Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, the name behind the English country-house look. Then the linen at Volga Linen, which I could have stayed in all afternoon.

At Daylesford we looked through the produce and the larder shelves. Carole Bamford started farming organically after questioning the chemicals used on farmland, and the farm shops grew out of that.

Lunch was at La Poule au Pot on Ebury Street, which has been there since the 1960s and looks as if it has hardly changed: dried flowers hanging from the beams, lunch by candlelight in the middle of the day, tables tucked into corners. I had the beef bourguignon; my mother, I think, had the sole; we shared a glass of Burgundy and took our time. What I remember most is the room: families from the neighborhood coming in, old regulars settling into a long lunch as if it were a Tuesday ritual.

Chelsea Green

Just north of the King's Road, Chelsea Green is the London I'd want to live in. Start with a croissant and coffee at Birley Bakery, then cross to Andreas, the greengrocer, where the vegetables sit behind glass-fronted drawers in painted frames like a cabinet of curiosities. There's a fishmonger and a cheese shop, and Finns, where we picked up a fish dish one evening to heat at the flat and ate it with the windows open to the square. There's a pharmacy and a cobbler too, and that's the point: the everyday shops are what make it a real neighborhood. For a meal or a glass of wine nearby, I'd keep Cinquecento, Wild Tavern and Wild Corner in mind.