A MALVERN housewife had the chance to mix with the Royal Family, Tony Blair and other celebrities in the gardens of Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

Angela Blundell, of Somers Park Avenue, visited the Palace as part of the Community Service Award for her work in renovating the churchyard at St Matthias in Malvern Link.

"It was a lovely day," said Mrs Blundell. "I wasn't presented to the Queen but I was very close to her. She was wearing a lovely lemon dress with green sprigs on it."

Mrs Blundell said Pop Idol runner-up Gareth Gates, who was sitting a few rows away from her, was picked out to be presented to the Queen, as well as numerous others in the crowd. Prince Philip, Prince Andrew and the Duke of Kent were among other distinguished guests at the ceremony, which was attended by around 7,000 people.

Since 1998, Mrs Blundell has been working with husband Douglas, friends Peter and Jane Edwards and other volunteers digging, landscaping, removing rubbish, cleaning up and making sure monuments and graves are not undermined by tree roots. She applied knowledge gained from years of cultivating and selling plants from home to the project.

"It's been a massive project and Angela was very much the driving force behind it," said churchwarden John West.

"She has been recognised for her work in the community, which we thought was rather nice."

Mrs Blundell, aged 51, said the next stage of the project was to mount a 600-year-old toll stone, called the Link Stone, on a nearby pedestal in the churchyard. People who wanted to move coffins from one side of Malvern to the other used to drop a toll into the stone.

"It's one of Malvern's oldest bits of history," she said. "I believe it was at the junction of Worcester Road and Pickersleigh Road."

Mrs Blundell is now seeking permission and funding to move the stone.