25 facts about Highgrove Gardens

In order to achieve a sense of harmony, I have worked with various people whose professional skills I admire in order to blend the arts of imagination and architecture into what, I hope, has gradually become a garden which delights the eye, warms the heart and feeds the soul.” 

- HRH The Prince of Wales

 

1. Almost 40,000 visitors tour the Highgrove Gardens every year.
2. The Highgrove Gardens cover 15 acres in total – all of them organic.
3. The money raised from the Garden tours and the Highgrove shop is given to The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund that provides grants for small and medium sized charities.  Recent examples include One25 Charity that helps vulnerable women, and Streetwise Opera - a performing arts charity for people who are or have been homeless.
4. The Prince has incorporated topiary into the Garden. It is cut once in the year during the autumn months.  
5. There are two fountains in the garden providing running, open water for birds throughout the year.
6. A willow “ramp” is placed in each water feature to provide an easy exit in case any wildlife inadvertently fall in.
7. The Prince is Patron of the Delphinium Society with many in evidence at Highgrove – the tallest Delphinium recorded so far has been 9’ 10”.
8. All the cut flowers used in Highgrove House are grown in the Gardens at Highgrove. In the summer, buttonhole flowers (primarily scented pinks) are cut for HRH’s use through the week for his engagements.
9. Highgrove House, The Orchard Room and the offices are heated using a wood pellet biomass heater.
10. Between 2,500 - 3,000 spears of asparagus are picked from the Highgrove beds annually.
11. The Carpet Garden was originally a Show Garden at the 2011 Chelsea Flower Show winning a Silver Gilt Award.  It was designed at the request of His Royal Highness around two Turkish carpets which can be found in Highgrove House.
12. The water feature close to the Stumpery is made of Hereford sandstone and Spanish holey limestone.  It contains four Pacific Ocean clamshells from Edward VII’s garden, Sandringham.
13. As Patron of Garden Organic, HRH grows heritage varieties of vegetables and fruit such as the ‘Broad Ripple Yellow Currant’ tomato, the ‘Doug Bray of Grimsby’ pea, the ‘Red Elephant’ carrot, and the ‘Lady Finger’ and ‘Hunt’s Duke of Gloucester’ apples.
14. 200 chickens roam areas of the Estate under a mixed range of fruit trees.  From these hens around 4,200 eggs are collected every year. The eggs are used in the Orchard Room restaurant and sold in the Highgrove Shop.
15. Highgrove has a Reed Bed waste water Filtration system which has been in operation since 1990 and manages the waste from The Orchard Room and Highgrove House. It is a natural gravity filtering system with little power input.  The waste runs into a bark-filled pit, filters through reed beds, then through willow beds and finally into a sump and out into a pond of clean water which is enjoyed by wildlife.
16. The Wild Flower Meadow at Highgrove is noted as the first of 60 Coronation Meadows in a project initiated by His Royal Highness in 2012 to commemorate Her Majesty’s 60th Coronation Anniversary; there are over 72 varieties of plants in the meadow making it a very species rich meadow.
17. The India gate was renamed Shand Gate in honour of Her Royal Highness’s brother Mark Shand who died in 2014.  Mark Shand founded The Elephant Family of which Their Royal Highnesses are joint Presidents.  There are two topiary elephants by the gate named Tara and Belinda.
18. Her Majesty The Queen gave three silver birch trees to His Royal Highness which are in the Arboretum at Highgrove.
19. Within the Garden is a small building called The Sanctuary. It was built to mark the Millennium and is made from cob bricks (made of Highgrove clay, sharp sand, limestone, chopped barley straw made the gardeners), lime render, local stone and oak.
20. The Egyptian Gates by the Kitchen Garden were originally carved by architectural students and the hieroglyphic on them says The flowers in the garden are a reflection of the stars in the sky.
21. To mark 25 years of The Prince of Wales actively running the Duchy of Cornwall estate from 1969 – 1994, The Duchy of Cornwall presented HRH with 66 Red Twigged Limes that are planted in an avenue.
22. The Temple of Worthies in the Stumpery displays a bronze relief of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother wearing her felt gardening hat. The Stumpery area in the garden designed in 1996 by Julian and Isabel Bannerman includes Oak and chestnut stumps from Cowdray Park, Derbyshire, Sandringham and Broadlands. 
23. The Tree House was built in 1988 for Prince William who was six and Prince Harry who was four at the time.
24. The Main Lawn at Highgrove equates to six miles of pedestrian mowing.
25. 40,000 snowdrops were planted at Highgrove to celebrate 40 years of The Prince’s Trust.  They were a private gift to His Royal Highness.  

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.

- HRH The Prince of Wales