Gardeners' World fans will be getting a very special episode this week, as presenter Monty Don welcomes Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall to the programme. During her time on the episode, she visits his Longmeadow garden in Herefordshire, and speaks about her own experience with gardening.
Monty Don has hosted the long-running gardening series from 2003–2008, and returned in 2011 where he's the current host. He bought the house and garden in 2001 and spent a lot of time creating Longmeadow.
The Duchess, who is a fan of the series, said: "I think gardens got people through Covid, they realised how special a garden was and what they could do with it, they could become inventive. Even if they hadn’t before, they could start growing vegetables.
"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.”
A few weeks ago, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall came to visit Monty at #Longmeadow. She's a keen gardener and loves watching the show. Tune in tonight at 8pm @BBCTwo to find out more 😎🌹🌿 #GardenersWorld pic.twitter.com/QkfJOpjo5RAugust 20, 2021
In a tweet, the Gardeners World account wrote: "A few weeks ago, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall came to visit Monty at #Longmeadow. She's a keen gardener and loves watching the show. Tune in tonight at 8pm to find out more @BBCTwo"
The Duchess has also revealed a little bit about her own garden plans, adding: "I’ve got a little bit of a woodland garden that I’ve started and I would love to build that up more, 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 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 — I think that’s very important."
Gardeners' World airs on BBC2 at 8pm on Friday 20th August.
