SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

Highgrove provides a unique insight into the Prince and his life - the garden is dotted with gifts from family and friends, with numerous personal touches, from two Grecian urns given to the Prince by the Duchess of Cornwall for his 70th birthday, to the bronze relief of the late Queen Elizabeth in her favourite gardening hat, and the thatched treehouse built for Prince William’s seventh birthday in 1989. Where many stately homes can feel like stiff and grandiose expressions of power, pompously overlooking their terraced lawns, Highgrove is very much still what it always was: a family home, a place of secluded nooks and corners, of high, topiarised hedges, a garden that reveals itself gradually, episodically, with each ‘room’ recounting a different story of its creator’s life. I spoke to the Prince on the telephone after my tour and he told me that when he purchased Highgrove (from Maurice Macmillan, the son of the former Prime Minister, Harold) the garden was almost non-existent, a blank canvas. ‘The house itself had nothing round it at all,’ he said. ‘There were no hedges; large open areas came right up to the house, with just a brown path that went round it. So we had to create “rooms”.’ The Prince’s love of gardening was particularly encouraged by the late Queen Elizabeth. ‘I adored being a child in my grandmother’s garden at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park,’ he told me. ‘My grandfather, King George VI, made a lot of it himself. He hacked out clearings and planted lots of rhododendrons and azaleas. I’ve always had a passion for them. There was an azalea walk with the common yellow azalea, which smells magical. As a child it had a profound influence on me, as did other parts of the garden. There was an old yew maze at Sandringham and my sister and I adored running round and playing in it. I’ve had such fun planting two mazes at Dumfries House, the 18th- century house I rescued in south-west Scotland, and it’s been immensely rewarding to see children enjoying them exactly as I did.’ The Prince and Princess Anne were also allowed to have their own patches of garden at Buckingham Palace as children. ‘We had a tiny bit at the back of the garden where we could grow a few vegetables and tomatoes. That experience is very valuable and I hope my grandchildren can have the same.’ We had a tiny bit at the back of the garden where we could grow a few vegetables and tomatoes.” 026 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL “ SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 027