A lifelong garden enthusiast

Her Majesty The Queen always took a great interest in gardening – as evidenced by her regular visits to the Chelsea Flower Show. She adored flowers and was a highly knowledgeable attendee.

In this issue we pay tribute to her love of horticulture. As some of our columnists reveal on page 5, whenever she visited Chelsea she was always fascinated with the show gardens and exhibits.

I did enjoy Medwyn Williams’ account of sending the Queen some of his potatoes, along with clear cooking instructions!

On page 16 our features editor Karen Murphy takes a peek at the beautiful Buckingham Palace gardens – from which the Queen was given a posy of flowers every single week.

And as we move forward with a new monarch, we can rest assured that King Charles will also be very passionate about gardening. Anyone who has seen the exceptional gardens at Highgrove, where he was directly involved in the design and planting, can see that he is someone who really does know his stuff.

We know of his environmental work and while he will not take a directly political standpoint any more, it seems certain that the royal gardens will be tended with a great deal of love and care!

If any of our readers met the Queen in a horticultural capacity – she often visited Sandringham Flower Show, for instance – please do send your memories and photographs to us and we’ll print them in the magazine.