The Duchess of Cornwall has spoken about the importance of gardening with BBC host Monty Don during a special episode of BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World, revealing that she thinks it helped many people through the pandemic and lockdowns.
“I think gardens got people through COVID,” Camilla told Monty Don as they walked through his personal Jewel Garden at Longmeadow, his Herefordshire home.
“They realized how special a garden was and what they could do with it. 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.”
Camilla shared that she’d love to build up a woodland area in her own garden, and that “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 sort of 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.”
She added, “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.”
Her host offered up the advice that, “I think you just have to accept that there are some things that are just not going to go for you this year, whatever it might be.”
Camilla has spoken of her passion for gardening previously, and once phoned in to a radio show to ask a question about growing lavender in the Highlands, at her Birkhall residence in Aberdeenshire.
In a video message ahead of British Flower Week in 2020, Camilla said of flowers that: “In these difficult times, when we are all searching for something to brighten our lives, there is nothing that can lift our spirits more than our native flowers and plants.
“They are nature’s healers. In our gardens, in our window boxes, or even in just a simple vase, their glorious scents and myriad of colours are veritable life enhancers.”
