It’s my favourite way to spend a Monday. Press day at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is a riot of colour, scent and celebrity – and I look forward to it every year. This year, the guests of honour were the King and Queen, who were joined by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, the Princess Royal and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. And for the monarch and his wife, both devoted gardeners, it was a chance to see some particularly personal touches up close.
They were joined by footballing royalty, Sir David Beckham and the man synonymous with gardening in the UK, Alan Titchmarsh, at the Curious Garden. This collaboration between the Royal Horticultural Society and the King’s Foundation – the charity founded by Charles in 1990 – has resulted in a magical garden designed by Frances Tophill that feels, in many ways, like a portrait of the King himself.
Alongside his favourite delphiniums are nods to the King’s lifelong passions and the heritage crafts championed by his Foundation.
Outside the oak-framed potting shed – described as a “museum of curiosity”, sits an easel for watercolour painting, while scraps of textiles represent his long-held commitment to sustainability.
Everywhere you look, there are deeply personal touches. I spotted a giant terracotta vase, inscribed with a message to Charles for his 50th birthday in 1998. Inside the shed, a 1995 newspaper cutting shows him at Highgrove, with sons William and Harry posing inside similar oversized pots.
A beehive, a bug hotel and beds of vegetables and flowers reflect his love of preserving wildlife and organic farming. It is, as Frances described it, “a botanist's garden”.
But the feature that has captured the most attention was a row of small, hand-painted garden gnomes, lined up on a shelf, and named in honour of Charles III, Sir David, Alan and Frances.
The gnomes were big news because, apart from one reappearance in 2013 to mark the show’s centenary, they have been banned there since 1913.
© Getty ImagesThe King doesn’t object to a gnome, as it goes. In fact, he displays one in his garden at Highgrove, often moving it around to surprise gardeners there.
That perhaps says more about his sense of humour than anything else. The gnome in question – decorated with the cameras of a press photographer – was gifted to him by veteran royal photographer Arthur Edwards at a time when Charles and the press did not always see eye to eye.
© Getty ImagesThe informal feel and slightly cluttered shelves inside the shed might not be what you‘d expect from a royal show garden.
But they really reflect the whimsical and natural feel of the garden at Highgrove and, I imagine, that of the Queen at her Wiltshire home, Ray Mill.
As she told Alan Titchmarsh: “It’s my kind of garden.”
But what perhaps best reveals the King’s personality is the very collaborative nature of the garden.
The King doesn’t object to a gnome, as it goes. In fact, he displays one in his garden at Highgrove, often moving it around to surprise gardeners there.
This is a man who has spent half a century supporting young people into training and education through his King’s Trust, and for the past 36 years, through the King’s Foundation.
Trainees from the Foundation and others from the RHS have built elements of the garden, along with heritage craft students trained at Highgrove, including Eleanor Pickin, a graduate from the Snowdon School of Furniture there.
King’s Foundation millinery students Emily Hurst and Finley Howie even created bespoke straw hats for Frances and Alan to wear for the event.
© POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesNext door, the beautiful Highgrove Shop is selling items to raise funds for future Foundation students, including prints of the King’s own watercolours, honey from his hives, and copies of the “Cluckingham Palace” sign from his hen coop.
Needless to say, the King and Queen looked thrilled to see it all in person. But they are also happy to highlight the spectacular displays elsewhere in the show.
Having followed them around the show in the past, I can vouch for how often the King pauses to admire something that catches his eye, as well as the planned stops on his designated route.
If you’ve never had the fortune to visit RHS Chelsea, it’s hard to sum up just how stunning it is. It brings together the very best of the best in plants and garden design and really marks the start of the summer season.
It’s also irresistible for celebrity spotters – Dame Judi Dench, Kate Moss, Kim Cattrall, Dominic West and Sir Brian May were all in attendance this year.
But the biggest star of them all was the man horticulturalist Rachel de Thame perfectly described on the BBC’s coverage as “Our Gardener King”.
