Highgrove: a garden celebrated

June

By now most of the colour is fading from the Arboretum as the salmon-pink Acer palmatum ‘Shindeshojo’ loses its lustre and the rhododendrons and azaleas sink back, exhausted after their brief spell in the limelight. In the Winterbourne Garden, the tree ferns are slowly unfurling their ‘bishop’s crozier’ fronds, while the first roses burst into bloom – if the buds haven’t already rotted in incessant rain. The growth in all the borders is exponential during this month and the longed-for delphiniums (one of my most favourite plants in the garden, if you can get them to grow properly) are almost ready to come out. To get the best out of delphiniums they need to be in massed ranks or in noticeable platoons, each one with a cane to ensure it is ramrod straight and at attention. The trees are all out in full leaf now and the orchids in the Meadow are revealing their pink and purple spikes. Having started with nothing 33 years ago, it is hard to describe the joy it gives me each year to see the ever-increasing number of orchids now appearing. In June there are two species in the Meadow – the southern marsh and the common spotted – with the occasional bee orchid from time to time.

The carpet garden, based on a Turkish carpet in Highgrove House, is much like stepping into another world. This garden was originally shown at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2001

July

The roses are in full bloom – one of my favourites being ‘Jude the Obscure’ which grows up the Indian Gate. On the Terrace the lady’s mantle forms a carpet of pale yellow tufts interspersed with all the Mediterranean plants growing in the cracks between the paving. The marjoram is in fl ower and if there is hot sunshine it is covered with shifting, swirling clouds of bumble bees and butterfl ies – small coppers, peacocks, meadow browns and cabbage whites. In the Kitchen Garden the central borders are at their best and I gaze in admiration at the clumps of seven-foot tall purple, blue and white delphiniums holding their heads high at the back of the borders. The excitement of all the new vegetables is at its height – the tiny, rare purple carrots being the best – and then suddenly there is a mass of strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries. The Carpet Garden now comes into its own, just as the Meadow becomes overgrown and the grass turns brown. The Front Drive, however, is a mass of mauve scabious, purple knapweed, yellow hypericum and sweet-scented Lady’s bedstraw that have taken up residence in this area and act as a fl oral fuel station for fl uttering fl otillas of butterflies and droning squadrons of bees.

Left: the view from the Lily Pool Garden up towards the Thyme Walk shows varying colours of green and gold. Right: HRH The Prince of Wales

Extracted from Highgrove: A Garden Celebrated, by HRH The Prince of Wales and Bunny Guinness. Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, priced £35. Text and photography © A G Carrick Limited 2014. Photography by Marianne Majerus, Andrew Butler and Andrew Lawson.