Kate’s garden centre trip sows seed of hope
The Duchess of Cambridge has undertaken her first face-to-face engagement since lockdown – to highlight how British firms are finding their feet again.
her visit to pick up flowers and seeds for her children at a garden centre came as her husband, Prince William, popped into a bakery for pastries.
As a keen gardener, Kate, 38, wanted to hear how the pandemic had hit Fakenham Garden Centre, near her Anmer hall home in Norfolk.
Dressed in khaki Superga trainers, brown jeans and a £175 Fjallraven padded hunting waistcoat, she told owners Martin and Jennie Turner on Thursday that she loved coming to garden centres with Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. She said it was ‘so important now as things start to ease, people know they can go out and particularly to places like this’. The centre had to shut until after easter, before resuming collection and deliveries in the car park, making five people redundant and furloughing 15 of its 50 staff.
William also visited Smiths the Bakers in King’s Lynn, which serves the Queen’s Sandringham estate, to buy pains au chocolat and a croissant – for the princely total sum of £4.15. The bakery also gave him an early birthday cake ahead of his 38th birthday tomorrow.
Meanwhile the monarch sent a message of support to the British Chambers of Commerce, saying as patron: ‘I wish all businesses every success in their endeavours in the weeks and months ahead.’