Prince Charles has received wide and often derisory attention for his horticultural pursuits. But he stands with his feet planted on a firm grounding. Royal enthusiasm for gardens, gardening and horticulture date back centuries before the emergence of the present House of Windsor in the second decade of the past century.
Move forward a couple of centuries and we find Henry “Chips” Channon disparagingly describing his monarch, the extremely abbreviated-reigned Edward VIII, as taking up “all things with violence – golf, hunting, flying, drink and latterly gardening.” And, alas, American divorcees: “Hark the Herald Angels sing/Mrs. Simpson stole our king.”
Although the present Prince of Wales has described himself as an Oxford graduate, artist, minesweeper skipper, organic farmer, businessman, philanthropist, sportsman, ambassador, and humanitarian, he once more modestly claimed, “I’m just a collector of flowers these days.” In point of fact he is far more than a “collector of flowers.” Highgrove, his country estate, is a sanctuary for enormous numbers of threatened fruit, flowers, trees and other plants.
Better yet, he practices what he preaches. On those occasions when he can escape from a busy schedule, the future monarch may be found working alongside his garden staff, pruning, transplanting, weeding . . . And yes holding horticultural conversations. “I just come and talk to the plants, really – very important to talk to them, they respond I find.” And as any gardener knows, they do. (W. C. Fields threatened his, but that’s another story.)
Prince Charles probably gained his appreciation of plants and gardening from his grandmother, a feisty lady of not a little Scottish blood. The Scots are, of course, famed gardeners. His late wife Diana had no such mentor. She attended fashion shows and rock concerts with other people in London while he worked alone in his gardens at Highgrove, 113 miles west of the city, explained Kitty Kelley in her 1997 book
The Royals. Alas, this attracted still more unwelcome comment. Comedian Benny Hill ruefully suggested a ‘Charles and Diana salad’ consisting of ‘lettuce alone.’ Perhaps this explains why, like many fellow comedians, Hill remained unknighted while paedophiles were welcomed to the fold . . .
Like many a rose named after a celebrity, that dedicated to Princess Diana has languished. Now, however, a magnificent clematis bears her name alongside a similar vine named after him. Available in Canada through
Gardenimport ,
Clematis texensis ‘Princess Diana’ is described as “a royal flush of cerise pink, trumpet-shaped blossoms continuing from July to September,” growing to some 2½ metres tall. Her consort,
C. viticella ‘Prince Charles’ is of approximately similar height with blue summer blooms with a blush of red toward the tips of the petals.
It was perhaps inevitable, given plant breeders desire to take advantage of the latest royal in the limelight that yet another such celebrity should be acknowledged in
C. texensis ‘Princess Kate.’ Large white blooms are supported upwards by purple stems, each flower flashing a purple throat, thrusting forth from three- to four-metre vines.
The Prince of Wales’ enthusiasm for all things horticultural is welcome after the horsier sect favoured by his sister and others of the House of Windsor. As Prince Philip once memorably opined of his daughter: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested”
What Roy Strong wrote a decade ago holds even truer today:
The monarchy’s new role as a symbol uniting the empire and then a commonwealth above class, race or creed was developed through images presented by mass circulation newspapers and later radio and television. Gardening, for these purposes, as a classless, uncontroversial society.
