Prince William and Prince Harry Are Sharing Their Childhood Treehouse with Their Kids
The quaint treehouse that Prince William and Prince Harry played in at their country home as kids is ready for their own children to enjoy.
The little cottage in the trees at Highgrove was built for the brothers in 1989, and it has recently been re-thatched (yes, it has a roof of straw a foot-thick). William’s kids Prince George and Princess Charlotte are known to have already tried it out. And, it is set to welcome Prince Louis and little Archie when they’re big enough to make the climb during their summer visits.
And rising high among the trimmed hedges and the organic flower meadows of Prince Charles’s Highgrove House, in Gloucestershire, is a balsam poplar tree, which the royal planted for his first grandson in 2015. (George catches up with its progress when he comes to stay!)
The children’s attractions in grandpa Charles’s magical garden encapsulate the old and the new themes of the garden. When the prince, 70, acquired Highgrove 39 years ago – it was his first country home with the late Princess Diana whom he married a year later – it had a neglected kitchen garden, an overgrown wood, some pastureland and a few hollow oaks.
Since then, Charles has overseen a transformation, creating a kitchen garden providing food year-round for the house, and walkways of azalea (the prince loves to create highly-scented areas of the 15 acres of garden) and the four-acre wildflower meadow sprinkled.
To underline that, his office has released a series of then-and-now pictures to mark the 25th anniversary of the garden being opened to the public. In that time, he has raised $8.8 million for good causes, via his Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.
Although he has a team of 10 gardeners led by Debs Goodenough, Charles is said to be a “dab hand” at the long-handled clippers, asking his team if there is anything he can help with during the weekend. The yearning to be active outside is something his daughter-in-law Kate Middleton is making very much part of her public message too – showing off her own garden design and an appearance on a kids’ show about fun in the garden.
Over at Highgrove, which now attracts nearly 40,000 visitors a year when it is open from April to October — Charles chooses the colors to theme the flower gardens in the shadow of the 18th-century house. These might be the racing colors of his mother Queen Elizabeth. This year, he chose the same multi-hued set in bouquet that he happened to have inside the house.
Among the new additions, a stunning sculpture of Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall fashioned from countless pieces of slate and modeled after the intimate portrait of the royal couple, released on their Christmas card in 2015. Created by Stephen Kettle, it was a 70th birthday gift to the prince from Sir Donald Gosling.
Charles also has a particular liking for spear-like delphiniums (they had one at 9ft 10in last year and hope to crack the 10ft barrier this year!).
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Whether it is the yew hedge shaped like a frog, or the busts of some of his friends or the garden modeled on one of his carpets, he wants to “feed the soul, warm the heart and light the eye,” for the visitors, he says in an introductory film.
