Pamela Underwood

Pamela Underwood (10 March 1910 – 1978), born Pamela Richenda Cubitt Montgomery-Cuninghame and later known as Mrs Desmond Underwood, was a British florist and nursery woman. She was an early enthusiast for flower arranging and she wrote about "Grey and Silver Plants". Personal life Underwood was born in the townland of Ballyfair in 1910 in County Kildare. Her parents were Alice Frances Denison des Voeux and Colonel Sir Thomas Montgomery-Cuninghame, 10th Baronet and she had one older brother. Her mother was a daughter of Sir William Des Vœux and a great-granddaughter of Sir Charles des Voeux, 1st Baronet. Her parents divorced in 1925 and the same year her father married Nancy Macaulay Foggo of British Columbia, they had two sons. Her mother married the civil servant Sir Aubrey Symonds in 1926. She married Thomas Abdy Combe, an army officer, in 1932, they divorced in 1941. In 1942 she married Desmond FitzGerald Underwood (d.1968). After the death of her second husband she preferred to be known as "Mrs Desmond Underwood". She had a son and two daughters. Career Underwood was trained at the Cheshunt research station and began as a plant grower in the 1930s. She was originally a market gardener, growing mostly tomatoes, but later gradually changed the business to specialise in pink and silver foliage plants. She opened Ramparts nursery for pink and silver plants, at Braiswick, near Colchester. She became internationally known as a specialist in pinks and silver plans and exported her plants around the world, with buyers as far away as the United States, Japan and New Zealand.