A Visit to Charles at
Highgrove
June 14, 2012
Early this
year I saw an article that advertised that Highgrove, the home of HRH Charles,
the Prince of Wales (one of his homes) would be open for tours of the
garden. I immediately tracked down the
times and dates and such on the internet and saw that you could have a
champagne tea at the end of your garden tour.
We must have looked up to see where Highgrove was at the time we ordered
the tickets but today, we had forgotten and were a bit dismayed to see it was
almost a 2 hour drive away from us. OH
well, the chance to see a Royal Garden is very enticing and a champagne tea
afterwards. Goodie.
My husband
only works ½ day but luckily I call him to remind him it is time to leave to
pick me up. I am looking in vain through
the information sent to me which states very clearly that I would have detailed
directions to get there but all I found was a postal code. At least the GPS knew it must be a single
address because it didn’t ask me for a house number. We set off and we were within the view of the
checkered flag on our Sat Nav but we were early and the instructions definitely
said don’t arrive more than 10 minutes early because they had limited parking
so we pulled into a side parking off the road and ate a packed lunch. Our tea was several hours away.
We got back
on the road to still be a bit early when we realized that the GPS was telling
us to turn into the front drive of Highgrove which was blocked off with
cones. Further down the road was an
entrance but absolutely nothing to tell us if it was the right place or
not. We circled past that entrance
several times before decided it had to be it and we were right as we were now
in a short queue with a policeman checking our tickets and our
identification. He directs us to the
parking lot where our tickets and identification is checked again and then we
park and go into the Orchard House where we will begin our tour.
We get to
see a video of Charles first as he tells us how he came to own Highgrove and viewed
its potential as a wonderful place for a garden and with the help of travels
and gardeners and ideas and such, it has grown into a wonderful place for sustainability
and organic farming and gardening. He
also pushed his charities a bit and then let us get on to the part of visiting
the garden. Much to my disappointment,
he wasn’t actually there to greet us.
Well, I expect no one told him that I was going to be there today so he
had staying in London or elsewhere on business.
John was
our guide and took us out into the parking lot to give us some more background
on the garden before we went into the first section. He never gave us a lot of plant names or
pointed out this plant or that one rather more than the huge ones or if someone
asked but rather spent a lot of time explaining how one section of the garden
had come to be and what it was before.
He was interesting and I did enjoy his stories.
The gardens
themselves were wonderful. A lot of them
look overgrown but they aren’t really, they are full and lush and pretty with a
lot of the flower plants already gone but getting ready for the summer plants
to bloom. The garden had a lot of different
“garden within a garden” areas separated
by old stone walls or yew trees and shrubs planted and cut into fantastic
shapes which included a huge snail, a huge frog and a squirrel. There were things all over the garden to see
besides plants as well. Huge urns and
vases, stone work, sculptures, tree houses, the stumpery, fountains and
more. I liked the stumpery the
best. It was an area where stumps have
been left and used to support other stumps and plants and it probably is very
spooky in the winter when there isn’t any greenery but now, it was quite lovely
and I’d like to have my own stumpery.
The only
problem with the tour was no photography allowed. I can understand that they need to protect
the Prince and I can also understand that if people were allowed to take
photos, they would be in the garden forever.
Still, it was a big disappointment not to have any photographic remembrances
to the tour.
Our last
stop before the tea was the carpet garden which was patterned after Turkish
rugs from inside the house with a small fountain that spilled water into
channels that ran between the plants. It
was set up for the 2001 Chelsea Garden Show.
I don’t recall seeing anything that lovely at the garden show this year.
By now, it
was drizzling on us so we were glad to get out of the rain and into the Orchard
Room for our Champagne Tea. We were
sitting with a gentleman for the Netherlands who comes over to visit gardens
for a week to 10 days every year and often visits the same gardens at different
times of the year to see them in the different seasons.
We get our ½
glass of champagne. I have learned
already that a champagne tea always seems to mean just ½ glass of
champagne. They never come around and
give you any more champagne but we did get two pots of tea, one for our Holland
friend and one for me and a pot of coffee for my husband. Our tea also consisted of finger sandwiches,
about 4 apiece and a scone apiece and some candies. All were delicious but we couldn’t manage to
finish all the sandwiches or candies.
Still
raining so we took a little time to look in the gift shop. There were some lovely gardening things in
there plus some great teapots and wine glasses and of course some of Highgrove's
own wines and jams and chutneys. There
were some plants for sale as well but we ended up with a very pretty blue glass
water jar and a couple of lovely wine glasses as all of our glasses are
mismatched and ordinary. Now we have two
nice ones.
Time to
go. The parking lot is almost empty and
the only one remaining on duty is the policeman at the gate who opens it to let
us out. It is pouring rain by now so we
get a long drive home in the rain.
Very nice
visit and a nice day even if we didn’t get to see Charles and didn’t get
invited into the house. It’s a lovely
garden and I would certainly go again.
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