From tiny acorns: Prince reaps £7m for worthy causes
Charles’s organic gardens at Highgrove prove fertile terrain after humble beginnings 25 years ago
THE gardens of Highgrove have raised £7 million for charity after the Prince of Wales transformed them from a flat neglected plot to an organic haven, it has been revealed on the 25th anniversary of their public opening.
The Gloucestershire garden, which is open to the public even when the Prince is in residence, has helped fund charities from Tusk, tackling elephant poaching in Africa, to apprentice beekeepers and opera for homeless people.
Before and after pictures released by Clarence House for the anniversary show the Prince in his early days at Highgrove, getting his hands dirty planting hedges and thyme.
Nowadays, he regularly catches visitors unawares to lend the gardeners a hand himself, and is said to be a “dab hand” with a long-handled pruner.
The all-organic method, in which wild flower meadows are scythed and the edges of driveways unmown if there are wild orchids to be found nearby, has been brought up to date with the installation of a watering system operated by Bluetooth to give flower beds a drink overnight to save water.
In an introductory video shown to visitors, the Prince speaks of how he wanted to abandon the “quick fix approach” to gardening for a more philosophical one, laying out structures like a painter might create his works.
He wanted it to “feed the soul, warm the heart and light the eye”, he said.
Since his 70th birthday last year, the garden is stocked with gifts from friends around the world, from the large Grecian urns given by the Duchess of Cornwall to the beehives from Fortnum & Mason.
The Prince acquired the 18th century country house and estate near Tetbury, Gloucs, in 1980, when it had only a kitchen garden, an overgrown copse, pastureland and a few hollow oaks. Archive pictures show the prince, in his 30s, with secateurs in one hand and a cutting of a shrub in the other, dressed casually as he walks through the meadow in front of the house.
The organic gardens opened annually to the public in 1994 and Clarence House said the tours, along with events, retail and catering at Highgrove, have raised more than £7million for charity over the past quarter of a century. Some 40,000 people now visit each year.
Another image from Highgrove features the Prince planting thyme along a cobbled path that would eventually become the Thyme Walk.
In the background is Tigga, the prince’s beloved Jack Russell, that is now commemorated with a sculpture of it sleeping in a wall. The modern garden is also littered with personal mementoes including a tree planted with Prince George and a tree house known as Hollyrood House built for Prince William’s seventh birthday in 1989.
The Prince has said of the gardens: “One of my greatest joys is to see the pleasure that the garden can bring to many of the visitors and that everybody seems to find some part of it that is special to them.” All profits from the sale of Highgrove products, garden tours and events are donated to the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.