The Palace announces Duchess Kate's surprise new project
For the past three months, Duchess Kate has been working on a special project – and the Palace finally revealed it on Tuesday. The Duchess of Cambridge is creating a garden for the annual Chelsea Flower Show in May.
The announcement came as the Duchess made her first official engagement of the year at King Henry’s Walk Garden in London.
Titled “RHS Back to Nature Garden”, the Duchess’s garden has been designed in collaboration with award-winning landscape architects Andrée Davies and Adam White of Davies White Landscape Architects.
“[The Duchess] is very hands on, model making, emailing images, coming up with all the ideas that we want to capture,” said Davies. “She would often bring a folder of cuttings with her full of ideas.”
Davies also revealed that Duchess Kate “has a clear idea of the colour palette she wants” and an interest in using natural materials.
The woodland-themed garden is hoped to “recapture for adults the sense of wonder and magic that they enjoyed as children, in addition to kindling excitement and a passion for nature in future generations,” a Kensington Palace spokesman said.
Sue Biggs, director general of the show’s organiser Royal Horticultural Society said the Duchess’s contribution will help encourage individuals of all walks of life to embrace nature.
“For over 200 years the RHS has been championing the power of gardening and growing plants for the environment, for health and wellbeing and to help people of all ages, from all backgrounds, to learn and grow,” said Biggs.
“So, to have the Duchess advocating this with us, and to be continuing our partnership with NHS England will, we're sure, further highlight the powerful benefit that access to gardens, nature and growing plants can have for all our health and happiness.”
The Duchess is also set to continue working with Davies and White on two further gardens for the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival in July and the RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey in the fall.