ROYAL PHOTO ALBUM:
The Cambridges family share their joy
In a display of uncensored delight, Prince George and his little sister Princess Charlotte ran barefoot around the garden that their mother has been working on since October last year. Meanwhile, their little brother, Prince Louis, barely a year old, took his first public steps as he too was filled with wonder at this idyllic muddy, verdant, delectable playground, a styled wilderness complete with treehouse and babbling waterfall in the heart of busy London.
It’s rare for the public to see the Cambridge siblings so unscripted. Videos and photographs of their visit to Mum’s ‘Back to Nature Garden’, this year’s most talked-about feature at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, ricocheted around the world in seconds. Hidden cameras were placed to capture the scene, the royal parents keen to ensure their children could explore undisturbed, but also eager to let them enjoy this very special and personal
creation. Later royal photographer Matt Porteous was on hand to take still photographs, perfect mementoes of the big day.
When asked by his dad, Prince William, for his verdict on the garden, five-year-old Prince George gave his mother a generous 20 out of 10 for the idyllic woodland hideaway. “Mummy’s done well,” concurred William, as Charlotte, who seems to be a very independent four year old, theatrically shrieked, “Ooh, la, la!”.
The garden, we are told, was inspired by the Duchess’s childhood, often spent mucking around in the grounds of the Middleton family home in leafy Berkshire, and by more recent memories watching her own three children enjoy the rural surrounds of their Anmer Hall home on the royal Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. However, I suspect George’s lofty score may also have been prompted by his own involvement in the project, for, while the design was a carefully conceived collaboration between Kate and RHS-winning landscape architects Andrée Davies and Adam White, of Davies White, the finishing touches were very much a Cambridge family affair.
Over the preceding weeks, the royal siblings helped their mum gather moss, leaves and twigs for the garden, and especially hazel sticks for the rather fabulous den. And, when the Duchess gave Her Majesty the Queen a tour around the garden on the opening day of the famous flower show, she proudly told her grandmother-in-law: “All the sticks are from Anmer and the children collected the pine cones.”
The garden’s centrepiece is a treehouse pitched on a platform atop a chestnut trunk and designed to look like a nest with cladding of branches of oak, larch and hazel. A boardwalk snakes through a woodland with pretty bluebells, geraniums and, in a nod to the mother-in-law the Duchess never met, a flush of delicate forget-me-nots. They were Diana, Princess of Wales’ favourite flower.
As George balanced on stepping stones skipping through the garden’s stream, Charlotte leapt onto the swing, a fun rope design styled after a giant ball of string. Earlier the Duchess had tested it and even Prince William had a go asking his daughter to give him a push. When George and Charlotte nestled down together side by side on the wooden bridge, dangling their feet below and dipping their toes in the stream, it was like a magical scene from Winnie the Pooh. Indeed, the much-scrutinised youngsters didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
In an interview with celebrity TV gardener Monty Don on his Gardeners’ World show, the Duchess was thrilled to talk about the project, which is very much part of the royal’s wider work in early childhood education and mental health. “There’s an amazing fact I learnt recently that 90 per cent of our adult brains are developed before the age of five,” she shared. “And really what a child experiences in those really early years directly affects how the brain develops and that’s why I think that it’s so important that all of us, whether we’re parents or carers or family members, engage in quality time with children and babies from a really, really young age.
“In recent years I have focused much of my work on the early years, and how instrumental they are for outcomes later in life,” Kate added. “I believe that spending time outdoors when we are young can play a role in laying the foundations for children to become happy, healthy adults.”
The Duchess spent many months in collaboration with Andrée and
Adam visiting gardens and suppliers to formulate ideas. Then, after finalising planning and preparation, the design team, including volunteers, had just a few weeks to construct the garden in situ in Chelsea and the Duchess couldn’t keep away. She was a regular checking on the garden’s progress with expected and unexpected visits.
“Nature and being interactive outdoors has huge benefits on our physical and mental wellbeing particularly for young kiddies,” Kate told Monty. “This is a natural, creative place for them to play and I hope that this woodland that we have created in a huge collaboration inspires families, kids and communities in general to get outside, enjoy nature, enjoy the outdoors and spend quality time together.”
The morning after her own family visited, Kate hosted specially invited schoolchildren with their teachers and joined them threading marshmallows onto sticks to toast over her campfire and climbing up the ladder into the treehouse. The Duchess talked to parents about the need for an outdoor “sensory experience” for today’s children, who tend to spend so much time staring at screens indoors or on their smart phones. She said she was delighted at ways the children reacted to the garden, paddling in the stream and enjoying nature.
Continuing the collaboration and to engage even wider audiences, the Duchess of Cambridge and her RHS collaborators have co-designed two further RHS Gardens, maintaining many of elements from the garden at Chelsea. The first will be on display at The Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival until July 7 and the second at the RHS gardens in Wisley, in the south of England, opening later in the year, where it will no doubt prove to be a popular tourist attraction.