Duchess’s childhood seeds her Chelsea debut
Kate enters famous flower show with a back-to-nature garden packed full of ‘forest bathing’ for families
FOR most gardeners, the Queen’s annual visit to the Chelsea Flower Show offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see her inspect and admire their handiwork.
For one new entrant this year, the experience will feel rather more familiar.
The Duchess of Cambridge is to make her debut at the show, creating a special “Back to Nature” garden based on her own childhood memories for the Royal Horticultural Society.
Inspired by the need to encourage families to love the outdoors, it will see her invite them to make their own “special moments” with a design partly based on the Japanese “forest bathing” idea, and a parenting book warning of “nature deficit disorder” in children.
The RHS’S announcement was made as the Duchess visited King Henry’s Walk Garden in Islington, London, where she met young children for a session of gardening, bird box building and outdoor pizza making.
Speaking about the benefits of learning to garden, she told children: “There’s so much to discover isn’t there? It’s really fun. If you haven’t tried it you don’t know how cool it is.”
Her Chelsea Flower Show entry has been designed in collaboration with award-winning landscape architects Andrée Davies and Adam White, of Davies White Landscape Architects, over three months of secret work in which they emailed and spoke nearly every day. They said the project to create the woodland-themed garden was a “passion” for the Duchess, who suggested incorporating the Japanese idea of “forest bathing”, whereby even office workers go out in their lunch break into the woods to relax.
She disclosed her admiration for Richard Louv’s parenting book, Last Child in the Woods, which proposes “saving our children from nature deficit disorder” and changing a world which sees them missing the “pleasures of a free-range childhood”. Miss Davies said: “She is very hands on, model-making, emailing images, coming up with all the ideas that we want to capture. She would often bring a folder of cuttings with her, full of ideas.
“The Duchess was very keen to use natural materials, has a clear idea of the colour palate she wants and her desire to incorporate the natural elements.”
A Kensington Palace spokesman said: “The garden seeks to recapture for adults the sense of wonder and magic that they enjoyed as children, in addition to kindling excitement and a passion for nature in future generations. Wild planting and natural materials will be used to recreate a woodland wilderness where children and adults can feel closer to the great outdoors.”
The Duchess will also co-design two further RHS Gardens with the same team, maintaining many of elements from the garden at Chelsea, for the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
‘There’s so much to discover isn’t there? If you haven’t tried it you don’t know how cool it is’
‘She is very hands on, modelmaking, emailing images... She would often bring a folder of cuttings with her’
in July and the RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey in the autumn.
Yesterday, the Duchess paid a visit to the King Henry’s Walk Garden to view its 67 plots for local people and hear about how community volunteers run a “from plot to plate” area for children.
“Do you all like learning outside?” she asked Year 4 pupils from St Jude’s and St Paul’s Primary School. “You can learn all the time.”
As the engagement unfolded, that serious message gave way to something a little more appealing to children: an impromptu royal Q&A.
“Can I see your children?” asked Patrick, aged eight.
Disclosing five-year-old Prince George had been learning about space at Thomas’s school, the Duchess replied: “They would love to come and do this with you. They will be very sad that I’ve been out here making pizzas with all of you and they haven’t been here. They are in school.”
“Has the Queen ever eaten pizza?” Nadirah, eight, wondered.
“That’s such a good question, I don’t know,” smiled the Duchess. “Maybe next time I see her, shall I ask?”
The Duchess wore a pair of dark brown suede hiking boots that were immediately hailed by fashion fans. The See by Chloé “Liegi” boots feature a chunky cleated sole and are on sale for £252.
She also wore a tweed jacket from Irish brand Dubarry and her muchworn skinny jeans from Zara, accessorised with Kiki “Lauren” gold pave diamond leaf earrings (£2,200).
This year’s Chelsea Flower Show opens to the public from May 21 to 25.