Alan Titchmarsh: I have never shared my private conversations with the late Queen – until now

‘It’s the kind of gardening I don’t like,” said Queen Elizabeth II.

“What sort of gardening is that, Ma’am?” I asked.

“The sort that uses a bulldozer.” 

We were in conversation in West Newton Village Hall on the Sandringham Estate some 22 years ago when I was invited to address the annual general meeting of Sandringham Women’s Institute.

There were, perhaps, 25 members present, including the late Queen as president – and I found myself chatting to Her Majesty over a cup of tea after my talk, which, thankfully, she seemed to find amusing; at least, she threw back her head and laughed in all the right places.

Her bulldozer remark related to Prince Philip, who was at that time excavating a pond in woodland at Balmoral and presumably creating something of a mud bath. Private conversations with the Sovereign remain private, and I have shared them with no one except my nearest and dearest until now.

Not that these are revelations; simply an insight into a woman who loved gardens as much as she loved the countryside, and who enjoyed, used and valued those that surrounded her different homes: Sandringham in Norfolk, Balmoral on Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Windsor Castle in Berkshire and at Buckingham Palace where, although the garden – London’s largest – is something of an outdoor function room, there were still solitary pleasures to be had as she walked her dogs.

My first encounter with the late Queen came at Chelsea Flower Show in 1985. I had designed a country kitchen garden for Woman’s Own magazine. Laid out in a simple chequer-board pattern, it comprised a miniature orchard carpeted with wild flowers, beds of roses intermingled with hardy perennials and a vegetable patch divided by a narrow, gently gurgling rill fed by a village pump.

Queen Elizabeth was ushered towards me and for the first time I felt the radiant warmth of that famous smile. Out came the hand. I shook it and indicated my modest plot; explaining that it was the sort of cottage garden that could be fitted in the tiniest space. She nodded, then turned to me and remarked: “Your onions are very small.”

Before I had a chance to articulate some kind of excuse for my apparent lack of growing skills she continued: “I like them small. When they’re big they taste of nothing at all.”

I remember little else from that sunny May day – meetings with the late Queen were frequently accompanied by a degree of amnesia, compounded by excitement and disbelief – but the following morning, when the card showing a Gold Medal appeared on the garden, my joy knew no bounds. I had a Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medal and Queen Elizabeth had visited a garden I had designed and planted. 

Her Majesty’s visits to Chelsea Flower Show had begun before her accession, when she would regularly accompany her parents, both of whom were keen gardeners. King George VI was a fan of rhododendrons, and under his patronage Sir Eric Savill masterminded the replanting of the Valley Gardens and what became known as the Savill Garden in Windsor Great Park, still famous for its spring show of rhododendrons and azaleas. 

King George’s consort, Queen Elizabeth, shared his passion for gardens. Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and Dame Sylvia Crowe were commissioned to provide designs for the area to the north of the house at Sandringham. The “garden rooms”, flanked by avenues of lime trees still thrive today. King George’s widow made gardens at Royal Lodge in Windsor and Birkhall on the Balmoral estate and is commemorated most memorably in the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ rose. Her garden at the Castle of Mey, now in the charge of her grandson, King Charles III, was created after the death of King George and gave her much solace from 1952 until her own death in 2002.

The present King’s horticultural acumen at least equals that of his grandmother, but Queen Elizabeth II also had a greater knowledge of plants and gardens than is often acknowledged. On that May day in 1985 I do remember one other remark. My garden sported small sentinels of holly clipped into pyramids. “I like your clipped ilex,” she said. Not holly; ilex – the holly’s Latin name. Just a small fact, but a telling one.

Queen Elizabeth became president of the Royal Horticultural Society on her accession to the throne in 1952 and visited the show more than 50 times during her reign; always interested, always asking questions, always encouraging those involved. Her final visit, in May 2022, saw her driven around the show in an electric buggy. Knowing Her Majesty’s reluctance to display any kind of incapacity, it demonstrates not only her love of the show but also her own interest in plants and flowers, gardens and landscapes and the people who created them.

In 2003 I wrote a book: Royal Gardeners: The History of Britain’s Royal Gardens. I sent a copy to the late Queen. I felt it would have been rude not to. A week or so later I received a closely typed letter taking up two sides of a sheet of A4 headed writing paper. It was from Prince Philip. He thanked me for sending the book to Her Majesty, which he said he “very much enjoyed”, and went on – at some length – to tell me what I had left out: mainly his own contributions to the planting of avenues of trees at Windsor, along with the redesigning of the east terrace and its fountain and the provision of a “sitting-out” garden. 

At Sandringham, after the accession, the recent work of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and Sir Eric Savill he “left well alone”, but there were more avenues to extend and plant, and an almost complete re-design of the garden at Balmoral “except for the formal rose beds directly west of the castle”. There was also mention of a “water feature” being dug by a bulldozer. I smiled to myself.

In a life involving hundreds of thousands of public appearances, it is quite apparent that gardens and well-designed landscapes offered both the late Queen and Prince Philip welcome respite from the pressures of public life. Windsor Great Park – especially in the land known as “Home Park Private” is, in some ways, a kind of Arcadian idyll. It is home to livestock that has to earn its keep, but also to ancient oaks, some of which were mature when William the Conqueror invaded Britain. They are over a thousand years old and still clinging to life. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Philip became the Ranger of Windsor Great Park; a role he took seriously and with an eye to the future – ensuring a comprehensive programme of tree planting: renewal as well as conservation.

When I visited Windsor Castle to make a programme about Queen Elizabeth’s gardens, I found the “sitting-out garden” under the south wall of the east terrace which Philip had described. It was furnished with wicker-work recliners and backed by an aviary filled with budgerigars and canaries. Just the place to settle down and read the Sunday papers, even if the flight path to Heathrow Airport conspires to shatter the tranquillity. 

The formal rose garden at Windsor which occupies the main part of the east terrace is as expansive as one would expect. The roses are, in many cases, appropriate. I remember ‘Royal William’, commemorating the birth of the late Queen’s grandson.

Queen Elizabeth’s year fell into a regular pattern, with Sandringham being the home that was visited for Christmas; Her Majesty returning only after Accession Day on February 6. Dating from the reign of King Edward VII, the gardens here are extensive: there is a rock garden made from Pulhamite (a secretly formulated artificial rock), countless avenues and shrubberies, a lake, the formal “garden rooms” designed by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and ample opportunity for walks with or without corgis and dorgis in tow. Small timber-built lodges pepper the 8,000-hectare estate, where the late Queen would enjoy picnics – and wash up afterwards. 

I remember asking her if she liked being in Norfolk for the winter. She said she did, but that the witch hazels she loved were now so tall that it was impossible for her to sniff their citrus-scented flowers without having to jump in the air. This she demonstrated with a little jump off the ground. I sent her some young ones – easier to sniff without undue elevation – and was thanked for my trouble.

Buckingham Palace might be “the office” but the rose garden with its enormous Waterloo Vase, the vast lake (once populated by flamingoes that were, alas, seen off by foxes), and the deep herbaceous borders timed to be at their best for summer garden parties still offered welcome respite from those red boxes. For most of her reign the late Queen would spend weekends at Windsor Castle, returning to Buckingham Palace on a Monday, where she would find on her desk a small posy of flowers picked by her gardeners. Primroses and lily of the valley were favourites – modest flowers for a remarkable woman who turned modesty into a fine art.

The private gardens at Frogmore, close to Windsor Castle, were a favourite place for solitary dog-walking. Exploring them alone I came upon a shelter, equipped with a seat and water bowls for canine refreshment.

At Balmoral, where much of the summer was spent, Queen Elizabeth could truly relax (the daily red boxes apart). It was, she once remarked, the only home in which she could spend more than two months of consecutive nights in the same bed. Balmoral boasts a capacious walled kitchen garden that provides fruit and vegetables for the royal kitchens, and a small but astonishingly spectacular conservatory just across from the castle where banks of pot-grown flowers were arranged to coincide with the late Queen’s annual visit. 

Apart from the Victorian rose garden to the west of the castle, which he was careful to leave untouched, the Duke could give free rein to his landscaping aspirations, even if not all of them went down well with his wife. Beyond the gardens are the moors and mountains that provided the backdrop to Queen Elizabeth’s last days. Her mother was a Scot; this was the landscape in which she felt most at home.

Over the years I had the delight of meeting Her Majesty many times. I planted a palm tree with her to celebrate a hundred years of Osborne House being gifted to the nation by King Edward VII. The late Queen tossed a couple of spadefuls of earth at the base of the plant, then handed the implement to me – indicating to the assembled company that it was really my job to plant trees.

I sat next to her twice at lunch – once after that tree-planting ceremony on the Isle of Wight and again in her Diamond Jubilee year when I was president of the New Forest Show. On both occasions the conversation was broad ranging, good humoured and remarkable for Her Majesty’s candour. I felt privileged to be treated to confidences – albeit minor ones – that I will never repeat.

Our last two meetings are among the happiest. I instigated the creation of a fountain to commemorate the tercentenary of the birth of Lancelot “Capability” Brown in the Cloister Garth at Westminster Abbey. We laughed together at the fact that my tie perfectly matched Her Majesty’s outfit.

The last time was at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, when, with more than a thousand members of the army, the navy and the air force and 500 horses I helped to celebrate Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee. Having commentated on the section devoted to Her Majesty’s own horses, I crossed the red carpet and saw Queen Elizabeth into her car after the performance. The beaming smile was as bright as ever. There was no time for conversation, other than me expressing my hope that she had enjoyed the show. She confirmed that she had and then said, with a joyful note in her voice: “And it didn’t rain!” Her Majesty got into her Range Rover and was driven around the arena to acknowledge an audience who cheered her to the echo. 

The car departed, the crowd dispersed and only then did the heavens open, giving rise to a deluge of biblical proportions. 

Within minutes of the announcement of Queen Elizabeth’s death on Thursday September 9 2022 a rainbow appeared over Windsor Castle; another over Buckingham Palace.

You can call it a coincidence; you can call it chance, you can call it what you will, but to celebrate the life and the reign of the longest-serving British monarch, on these occasions even the weather showed its respect. I shall gaze upon our now towering palm tree on the Isle of Wight and remember with great affection one of the most remarkable human beings it has ever been my pleasure to meet.