Prince Charles is encouraging his young grandson to follow in his footsteps and become a passionate gardener.
The Prince of Wales spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time, and gave a tour to the show’s presenter, Eric Robson. During the interview, he spoke about his passion for gardening and how he hopes that Prince George develops a love for it as well.
“I hope, you just never know what people are going to be interested in; the most important thing is that I got him planting a tree or two here,” he said.
“We planted it together and shovelled in the earth because that’s the way, I think, when you’re very small, and then each time you come you say ‘do you see how much the tree has grown?’ and you hope that they take an interest.”
The Prince called in from Highgrove House, the official family residence of himself and his wife the Duchess of Cornwall. Highgrove House is located in Tetbury, Gloucestershire.
According to the Prince of Wales’s website, “The Duchy of Cornwall owns Highgrove, and bought the house, garden and nearby farmland…in 1980.”
The Highgrove gardens are self-sufficient – all of the green waste is recycled to be used as mulching material or as compost.
The Prince has famously devoted his time to gardening, a hobby that developed in childhood after spending time in his grandmother, The Queen Mother’s, gardens.
“I always like gardening – I hate to say this – from a child’s point of view. It’s a funny thing, because I have such happy memories of bits of garden at my grandmother’s house,” he told Robson.
While Prince Charles holds out hope for his grandson, he shared a funny story involving his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, and his reaction upon seeing the stumpery in the garden: “When are you going to set fire to all this?”