If you’re touring the royal residence, you might want to keep an eye out for the monarch dead-heading the roses or pruning shrubs
In a corner of rural Gloucestershire, England — around 11 miles west of London — lies a home fit for a king.
Highgrove House, near the village of Tetbury, is a place of calm, color and quiet industriousness — something of a mirror of the philosophies of King Charles, 75, who acquired the home in 1980 when he was Prince of Wales.
When he did, it was a blank space for the artistic gardener to indulge his ideas. Almost five decades on, it is a series of gardens, reflecting the royal, his life and his tastes.
Increasingly, it is a place for education too, with a tie-up between his King’s Foundation and couture house Chanel behind a unique embroidery qualification. Playing a key role in King Charles’ desire to preserve heritage skills, the Metier d’Arts Fellowship sits alongside a furniture school named for Charles’ cousin Lord Snowdon that’s also taught on the estate. The school recently saw six students graduate after a 24-week course in intricate skills needed for the industry, and they used Charles’ unique gardens for inspiration for their artwork.
On a recent summer walk through some of the 15 acres at Highgrove, it is easy to see how they would get so many ideas.
The tour begins near the Shand gate, originally called the Indian Gate, named for Queen Camilla’s late brother Mark Shand. At the kitchen garden, an archway of apple trees is a centerpiece of a thriving space providing vegetables for the house. Meanwhile, eccentricities include the Wall of Gifts, stone pieces given to the King by stone mason students over the years, and a Stumpery that creates a rich environment for growing ferns.
The flowers in the wild meadow have almost died off now, but they were flourishing the meadow with color and pollen-heavy plants only a week or two earlier, feeding the beehive that sits close to one of the hedges. Then there’s the treehouse, a vine decorating its sides, that was built for his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry when they were 6 and 4.
Hidden from sight were the 16 different tours of around 20 visitors each making their way around the gardens. (Ingeniously worked out so that people on one tour don’t tend to bump into those from another. Sometimes, the guide says, they might catch sight of King Charles out dead-heading the roses or pruning shrubs.)
Like when PEOPLE visited, they will be surprised at how close the guides take you to the house. A case in point is where the stump of a magnificent cedar tree which came down in 2007 is clothed in an oak pavilion complete with an oak tree springing out through its roof. A steeple, matching that of the nearby church in Tetbury, reaches out and up from the pavilion too. (Look closely and there’s a small hole incorporated in one side to allow tree-dwelling animals to populate.)
Snaking up and around the front door of the 18th-century grand home, which recently welcomed soccer star David Beckham as King Charles named him as an ambassador to his foundation, is a crimson glory vine snaking around it. It will turn bright red in the fall.
The tour ends with a visit to the heavily scented Carpet Garden, so named as its central mosaic and fountain are based on a carpet designed by the King. It was an exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2001.
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All of it is cared for by Gráinne Ring, the head gardener who leads a team of 15 including apprentices that the King is encouraging.
“I see my job as a facilitator of the garden, a facilitator of what His Majesty wants,” she tells PEOPLE. “He has been a gardener longer than me! I can choose the bulbs, but he will choose the color schemes. It’s really about working together.”
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Among those gaining original ideas from all this and learning classic couture dress creation techniques as they do on this year’s 24-week post-graduate Metiers d’Art Fellowship, was Beth Somerville, 25, from Andover, Hampshire. She was inspired by the buds of magnolia and rhododendron in the Arboretum to depict a sacred geometry shape on her embroidery.
Meanwhile, Angelica Ellis, 27, from London drew her idea from the purple and orange blooms of crocuses in the garden. “Here, it is all about protecting traditional crafts which is something I care about too,” she says.
“You see the benefits in France where they’re quite good at producing and keeping their skills. The project here is super important,” she adds. “There are things that the tutors here have given me that I don’t think you get anywhere else.”
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Underpinning it is the message of sustainability, and the students use dead stock that has reached the end of its use commercially. One even created her own beads to use in her design. “The students have been really experimental with materials and pushed the boundaries of what is expected in couture embroidery,” says Daniel McAuliffe, education director at Barley Court.
Rosie Merriman, 23, from Cwmbran, Wales (who imagined a midnight banquet in the garden for her graduation piece that was set on a corset), adds, “Having such a person as the King talking about these crafts puts them on the map again.”
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she adds. “It’s rare to be given accommodation and a real diverse garden from where to get inspiration. All of us are inspired by the same place but all the pieces are very different.”
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Alongside the formal post-graduate course, there are other workshops in everything from weaving to stonemasonry, open to the public and craftspeople wanting to improve their heritage skills.
King Charles is known as an artist, a keen and talented watercolorist. And, says Constantine Innemee, Highgrove Director for the King’s Foundation, that artistic eye is prevalent around his home. “You can see he put these gardens together as a series of small gardens,” he says.
“For us, it is a massive privilege to say we are stewards of Highrove Gardens. We aren’t just helping to preserve and grow this as a heritage asset now, but we also have the responsibility for something that can exist in the long term,” he adds.
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“But what really makes that whole is the ability to have students have access to it and gain inspiration from it. This is fundamentally the private residence of Their Majesties, but openness and accessibility have always been at its core,” Innemee says. “It is a deeply private space, and it is such a reflection of the King and his vision and his artistry, but it is widely open because we’re able to give young people the ability to come and see that and come and go and get inspiration.”
