Camilla and Monty’s royal garden party
THE Duchess of Cornwall has been given advice from Monty Don after mice and voles tucked into her strawberries and asparagus.
Camilla appears on TV’s Gardeners’ World tonight and tours Monty’s Longmeadow garden in Herefordshire and tells of her green-fingered frustrations.
She said she was “very lucky” to have a big vegetable garden at her Grade II-listed Ray Mill home in Reybridge, Wiltshire.
But added: “You get the mice, the voles this year, all ate the asparagus roots and then they got into the strawberries, so you can never win, there’s always something”.
Monty, 66, said: “You just have to accept that there are some things that are just not going to go for you, whatever it might be.”
The Royal Horticultural Society says wood mice, yellow-necked field mice, bank voles and shorttailed voles can damage gardens.
Healing
Experts also warn climate change may boost rodent numbers.
Camilla, 74, told the TV guru: “I think gardens got people through Covid. They realised how special a garden was. They could become inventive. You can go into a garden and completely lose yourself. You’ve got birds singing, you’ve got bees buzzing about – there is something very healing about gardens.”
The Duchess takes a keen interest in husband Charles’s home at Highgrove, Glos, but it is understood she was talking of Ray Mill.
She added: “I’ve got a little bit of a woodland garden that I’ve started and I would love to build that up. I would also like to have a proper wildflower meadow.”
At one point Monty’s dog Nellie rolled on the floor and Camilla gave her a tummy rub.
●●Gardeners’ World is on BBC Two tonight at 8pm.