Gardeners’ World hosts Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall

BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World welcomes a very special guest this week, as Monty Don shows Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall round Longmeadow, chatting to her about her long-standing love of gardening and what she most enjoys growing, as they explore the Jewel Garden.

The Duchess of Cornwall shared her thoughts on how important gardens and gardening can be for our wellbeing, especially over the course of the past 18 months, saying, “I think gardens got people through Covid, they realised how special a garden was and what they could do with it, they could become inventive. Even if they hadn’t before, they could start growing vegetables.

“It was a sort of spiritual experience for them, they discovered a sort of affinity with the soil – you can go into a garden and you can completely lose yourself, you don’t have to think about anything else, you’re surrounded by nature, you’ve got birds singing, you’ve got bees buzzing about. There is something very healing about gardens.”

On her plans of what else she would like to do in her own garden, The Duchess spoke of the importance of attracting wildlife, “I’ve got a little bit of a woodland garden that I’ve started and I would love to build that up more, I would love to put down swathes of bulbs, and I would also like to have a proper wildflower meadow. At the moment I’ve got a bit, but the grass has taken over and we’re going to have another go this year of planting more seeds, because I think, especially now, it’s ever more important to have these wild flowers – if we’re going to keep on attracting butterflies and bees. I think that’s very important.”

And when it comes to a garden’s less welcome visitors, it seems The Duchess’s garden is as susceptible to the same challenges that affect everyone. “I’m very lucky I’ve got a big vegetable garden, but you get the mice; the voles this year all ate the asparagus roots and got into the strawberries, so you can never win, there’s always something,” she added.

Gardeners’ World, BBC Two, 8pm BST on Friday August 20.

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