A visit to handsome Highgrove

There is no sign on the gate to tell you that you’ve arrived at Highgrove Royal Gardens, on the rural road to Tetbury. Instead, a serious-looking guard will step out of his booth and check your identity before offering directions to the car park. For Highgrove’s verdant surroundings are tended by Prince Charles himself, during the weekends he spends at the official family residence that has been his home since the 1980s.

The neo-classical Highgrove House sits at the centre of the gardens, and tours – lasting two hours and led by extremely knowledgeable guides – bring you right up to the white front door. The symmetrical frontage is softened by a Crimson glory vine and a hedge clipped into a cloud, which leads towards the swimming pool that was a wedding present to Charles and Diana from the British Army. The gardens radiate from the house: 15 acres that encompass meadows, formal gardens, an arboretum, and a stumpery that houses a national collection of broad leaf hostas.

The Sundial Garden at Highgrove backs onto a meadow of wildflowers

The most intimate space is the Sundial Garden. It sits to the southern, wisteria-clad side of the house, where modern floral prints and well-kept house plants can be glimpsed through the windows. Encircled by a thick yew hedge, the eye is drawn along the space between the six beds, each with a Royal Star magnolia nestled in amongst the delphiniums. At the end is a stone sundial and an impressive set of wrought iron gates, with the prince’s three ostrich feathers and coronet picked out in gold. Photography has always been prohibited in the gardens, but from this month guides will allow visitors to take snaps from certain locations.

Beyond the gates is a four-acre meadow that grows to waist-height in the summer before being cut for hay. More than 30 varieties of wildflower including rare wild orchids grow freely, reflecting the flora that would have filled the fields of Gloucestershire before the advent of intensive farming.

The wisteria-clad Highgrove House as seen from the meadow, where rare orchids grow freely

It is Prince Charles’ commitment to organic methods that really shapes the gardens, making them productive as well as for pleasure. When the Duchy of Cornwall bought the house in 1980, the grounds were open parkland. Now, in the orchard with its intricate Celtic knot hedge, chickens scratch around beneath the crab-apple, quince and damson trees.

Rainwater is harvested, and all organic material is composted. Even the buildings – a treehouse built for Princes William and Harry when they were aged six and four, and the greenery-wreathed Sanctuary, described by our guide as Charles’ ‘man cave’ – are constructed from materials with minimal environmental impact.

The Sanctuary is Prince Charles’ ‘man cave’

Each garden has its own character, woven together by planting and serpentine paths, but none is more impressive than that at the back of the house, where an avenue leads through layers of clipped hedges that showcase the skills and patience of the 11 full-time gardeners and two trainees.

A millstone is repurposed as a gentle, trickling water feature on the patio, flanked by low, tumbling plants and two enormous olive oil jars from Turkey: objects gifted to Prince Charles are found throughout the gardens. On the site of a great cedar tree that had to be felled in 2007, an oak pavilion with a reaching spire echoing that of the Parish church in Tetbury has been built to celebrate its life.

The topiary along the Thyme Walk is some of the most impressive – and fun – in the whole garden

Thyme, lavender, and primroses push their way up between the paving slabs that form Thyme Walk, a meandering pathway between a set of yews clipped into surprisingly fun shapes. A Christmas pudding slathered in cream sits next to a tiered wedding cake; behind them are a helter-skelter and a series of crowns, each more complex than the last. Orange segments, topsy-turvy cakes and a pudding topped with a cherry complete the Alice in Wonderland-like set.

The tour ends with a nose around the gift shop for some organic fudge or a bottle of damson liquor. “You are now entering an old fashioned establishment,” says sign beside the entrance to the carpark and restaurant, where the walls are decorated with a mismatch of royal portraiture. Though it might look traditional from the outset, Highgrove’s gardens lift the veil, and what is revealed is a sense of humour between the clipped vowels and the clipped hedges.

Tours of Highgrove Royal Gardens must be booked in advance at www.highgrovegardens.com. Tickets cost £27.50 per person, with all profits donated to the Prince of Wales’ charitable foundation.

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