SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

032 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL You never quite know what influence you’re having or what difference the garden is making.” If the Prince’s environmentalism was one of the horticultural sticks used to beat him, another was his habit of talking to his plants. Here again, though, there’s a sense that science is proving plants to be more complex and sentient than we ever imagined. In Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful new book Underland, there’s a chapter on the vast fungal systems beneath the soil and the way that plants use these pathways - known as mycorrhizal networks - to share nutrients, to warn of fires and predators, to communicate. I was struck by the fact that Goodenough seems to speak as much about mulch and soil structure as about what is above ground, clearly something she has picked up from her employer. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I’d always felt that there was this interconnectedness in nature long ago,’ the Prince told me. ‘Without it, nothing is sacred any more and we lose that fundamental understanding of the need for harmony - or balance - with nature. I remember before I began the process of organic conversion here all those years ago, you only had to feel the soil, pick up handfuls of it, and there was no earthworm activity at all. And that’s one of the things that you so often find with land that has been subjected to intensive agriculture and the overuse of chemicals and artificial fertilisers. The key is how do you maintain the health and fertility of the soil through ensuring that there is enough mycorrhizal activity and all the bacteria and everything else that is needed? There’s an immense world underground of astonishing numbers of species all living in a kind of symbiotic relationship with each other, particularly in woodland. And you only have to look at the soil to see these little white filaments running through it all. Everything is connected.’ The Prince even believes that we might be able to learn something from these below- soil relationships. ‘These fungi live in a symbiotic relationship with trees and plants,’ he said. ‘If the trees are stressed in any way, or if they suffer damage, then it changes the relationship with the fungi, which then can eat them up. And this is what we need to recognise: that the things we do in one direction can have a profound effect in another.’ Finally, I asked the Prince whether he thought his own grandchildren, the latest of them, Archie, only a newborn when we spoke, would learn about gardening from him the way he inherited his own passion for horticulture from his grandmother. ‘Who knows? I hope so. You never quite know what influence you’re having or what difference the garden is making, but it’s only years later that people will admit it. I had no idea, for instance, that my own children might have been paying attention to me about rubbish and plastic waste. They suddenly announced that they had actually been listening, but you think you’ve been having no influence at all.’ Highgrove is an inspirational place - the idea that a garden so beautiful and multilayered has been built in such a relatively short time gives hope to those of us with young plots cheering every inch of growth. I come back from the (excellent) shop loaded down with delphiniums and camassias, and with a new spring in my horticultural step. As for the Prince, he sees himself as the caretaker of this garden for future generations, and, rather than resenting the hordes that tramp through from spring to autumn, draws deep satisfaction from their presence. ‘The whole point of gardening is to give pleasure to other people, not just me. I see it as an exhibition. It’s rather like painting my bad watercolours - I just try to ensure they - and the garden - are as good as possible.’ SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 033 “