King Charles - disquiet at Highgrove & the gardeners’ exodus - SUNDAY TIMES INVESTIGATION

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Murdoch is growing bolder in his dotage — first with Trump, and now with another bombshell investigation into the grasping, stagnant, and catastrophically out-of-touch Windsors. And yet we keep pumping more public money into this so-called dysfunctional family.

What you need to know

King’s demands, staff shortages and low pay led to gardener exodus at Highgrove

Royal charity which runs gardens told to offer mental health support after formal investigation

Charles has lost 11 of 12 garden staff since 2022 including two head gardeners who quit within a year

Monarch said of one worker: “Do not put that man in front of me again”

After Ukraine invasion King proposed plugging staff shortages with war refugees or the elderly

At one point half of staff were on minimum wage

https://archive.ph/fspT3#selection-1495.0-1501.155

That's an excellent point, @CoffeeCantata . The difference between the gardeners we retain, who are contractors, not employees, and the ones at Highgrove, who are employees with completely different rights and entitlements.

It's me who pays the £40 an hour, based on a rough estimate from the invoice, and that £40 is £40 each to 2 gardeners, so £80, but one is the contractor and the other an employee of his. So we need to factor in that my gardener has to pay his own NI, tax and pension out of that, plus pay his employee's gross wages, NI and pension, plus all his own equipment costs (including expensive replacement) and transportation costs/petrol, and insurance. On top of that he needs to actually make some kind of profit. So our personal, self employed gardeners have a completely different set of financial considerations to employed gardeners somewhere like Highgrove, and their hourly rate is bound to be much higher for similar work.

Then we have to think about how work may drop off over the winter with fewer working hours. Our gardener does fence painting and maintenance in the lean months, which we happily retain him for, but many customers just simply won't be paying him for work over the winter. Contrast with an employee who does not have the same uncertainty.

So @simpsonthecat , your £18 an hour needs to factor in all the additional outgoings of a contractor compared to an employee. I'm not even sure my gardener is earning an outrageous amount from us after all his business outgoings are factored in.

The King’s (formally Prince’s) Trust are responsible for the gardens.

That is incorrect.

The King's Foundation (linked to upthread) is responsible for the gardens. All profits from the Highgrove Gardens (from the shop, tours etc) go back to the Foundation to fund their education and training opportunities.

The King's Trust is a separate organisation.

My gardener is a lone person working, I have no idea of her financial arrangements. Sad thing is, she is moving and it is going to be near impossible to find someone else as good as her.

And our self-employed gardeners will need to buy their vehicle and some pretty pricey equipment too, which again, employed gardeners will not need to do.

Same here. We've had our gardener, a Portuguese man, for 30 years and he has been a star. Hard-working and reliable, and going above and beyond. But it's sad because, like so many people from rural Portugal, there is no work at home for them and he has been in exile here really. He misses Portugal enormously and just lives to go back there for the whole of August. We used to think he'd retire there, but predictably his son is a 'local lad' and wouldn't leave the UK. This young man has set up a very smart gardening business and charges the local hedge-fund managers a small fortune - and fair enough!

But our gardener is getting on and we dread him announcing his departure.

My mistake-I stand corrected. Still pretty circular, though!

Some excellent points were raised about the challenges of running a gardening business. You're out in all kinds of weather, and during periods of heavy rain or storms, you're often unable to do core tasks like mowing. To be efficient, you also need to ensure that your customers are in the same general area otherwise, you spend too much time driving between jobs. It can take years to build a well-optimised route and client base.

Then there’s the issue of traffic particularly in the South East getting to and from sites can be a nightmare. In London, you also have to factor in congestion charges, the ULEZ, and the cost of maintaining a van, tools, and equipment. Disposing of garden waste is another hidden burden, both in time and money.

Tool theft is another serious and growing problem. A friend of mine had his equipment stolen after he forgot to lock his van while working in a back garden. When you’re working in front gardens, it’s shocking how often you see a procession and I do mean procession of dodgy-looking characters in unmarked white vans cruising slowly through neighbourhoods, clearly on the lookout for easy opportunities. It really is that bad.

In London especially, you need to price by the job, not by the hour. You have to judge what the service is worth to the customer and quote accordingly. If you want to make a sustainable and decent living, you have to be pretty ruthless in your estimating there’s no room for underpricing or being too generous with your time.

There’s also the looming threat of ill health. As you get older, your risk increases, and many underestimate just how physically demanding this work is. A lot of people go into gardening as a post early-retirement business, thinking it’ll be manageable. But the truth is, it’s a young person’s game in many ways especially if you're doing it full-time. You have to be constantly vigilant about protecting your body: one fall, accident, or back injury could end your ability to work altogether.

Ah - so from what you say about the King's Foundation, it does indeed sound as though they are a training charity. That would explain a) minimum wage (you are basically getting training on the job, rather than paying for a qualification at a college) and b) the 'rapid turnover'. I know of charities which have the aim of taking on people to train in particular skills who then leave to find professional-level employment (rather than 'apprentice/student/intern'-type employment) once they reach the required level of skill and experience.

Is this what's going on at Highgrove? I admit I don't know,but if the KF is that kind of charity, it would explain a lot.

And trainers do need to be rigorous - if someone isn't up to the mark, they can't just be allowed to stay or pass the qualification. I used to work at a NT house and occasionally there were people who didn't pass the probationary period.

Can anyone shed light on this?

I don't know. When I looked at the website, any of the gardening educational courses mentioned are short and are elsewhere.

There are no current gardening vacancies at Highgrove (several hospitality ones).

It may be the case that the young people they employ are done so on an apprenticeship basis, so go to college for the educational portion. But that's a guess on my part.

Well it's all gone a bit quiet!

Hardly an “allegation” ….

Do explain further…you’re being mysterious now!

Gardeners make much less than $100k a year so turnover is high. They also aren't on call 24/7.

I don't know about the UK, but US landscaping services have a boss and a team leader, and many employees are seasonal or day labor. Unless you own the company, it's a summer job or shortterm

In my experience, the lower to mid-range end of the landscaping trade often attracts a surprising number of eccentric characters, and in some circles, drug use isn’t uncommon. By contrast, the high-end of the industry tends to be far more professional with clients expecting (and accepting) a sort of “name your price” approach for quality work.

No, Spectre - you haven't touched a nerve, but I feel that for my own sake, and for others on MN whom you continually try to intimidate, that your rude and personal posts should be deleted.

I know you've been deleted many times before and I don't understand why you don't just post reasonably, like most other people do.

Attack the ideas and opinions, not the person. Please don't tell me or anyone else what we think, or let us know that you follow us from thread to thread, taking note of our personal information.

That's all I ask!

I suppose it depends what is meant by 'gardening' - it covers a wide spectrum.

There are people who mow grass and clip shrubs etc - say, people who work for councils - or watering floral displays, which they're very hot on in my town.

And then there are the plantsmen/women who have a deep knowledge of horticulture: planting, propagation, pruning, maintenance, garden design etc etc, and I think these are the sort of people we're talking about here. You need training and/or a qualification for these things, whereas just using a lawn mower, leaf blower (the work of the devil, surely!), or strimmers is much more basic.

Once again, excellent point @CoffeeCantata . My experience is that the heavy lifters who don't know a whole lot about plants but work tremendously hard keeping everything under control are the ones who charge the most. We have lots of female gardeners in our area who are real horticulturalists, and have put those skills into one woman garden design businesses, great at planting, but don't do the heavy lifting. They don't charge as much, but their usefulness is limited unless you are after garden design. Most businesses around me are a mixture of both types. My gardener is not a horticulturalist, his employee goes to college, so looks like he's an apprentice learning the horticultural side separately, and certainly seems to do all the plant/bed related work while the boss does the heavy jobs. Choices of plants and putting them in is down to me. We have loads of trees, and a separate arborist to deal with those.

The upshot: if you want to be a horticulturalist/garden designer and end up at the Chelsea Flower Show, earning mega bucks blowing leaves in my garden is not likely to get you far. Having Highgrove Gardens on your CV, along with the chance to get RHS qualifications or other college/horticulture qualifications, is possibly the quid pro quo for lower wages.

I think we all know that this thread isn’t really about gardening or staff wages .

No, it probably isn’t. But you surely must accept that it’s not good optics for the King to be paying noticeably low wages to his staff. There’s no rumour or speculation about that- it’s a fact. And nobody would excuse it in any other spectacularly rich man.

It’s been pointed out enough times already that even I took notice, the king was paying their wages but now he’s not paying their wages the charity is.
so I would say the optics are not good for the charity!

When reading posts on this, ask yourself: What would the poster be saying if the tables were turned if these same allegations were made about our friends over the water, backed by a comprehensive investigation by the Sunday Times and supported by numerous off-the-record but credible sources from within the estate?

Be honest and you'll see their real views soon enough.What’s needed is accountability, not disingenuous deflection or attempts to minimise serious allegations.

That said, the story was picked up elsewhere and attracted fairly robust comment where replies were allowed most of it condemning the King. But it now seems to have fizzled out. You can bet the Royal Rota was spinning furiously behind the scenes to keep a lid on it.

By the end of the week, don’t be surprised if Rebecca English is soft-soaping the whole thing, perhaps with an “insider exclusive” on how “the Palace is bravely rising above it all” reframing the narrative entirely, with a huge dose of anti-Harry and Meghan invective thrown in for good measure.
That’s how it works.

Thank you - I was just trying to work out how to say it again.

On a separate note, I think it's fairly well known that the King can be quick tempered but is also very enthusiastic about things - witness the comments about the positive as well as the negative notes after the garden walks. I haven't heard of him persisting in unpleasantness - he always seems to get on well with people generally (as per the anecdote upthread).

I think the most important thing is that the manager / head of gardens (whatever the title) did not 'manage the King's expectations' which surely must be an important part of a role like that. It's also the manager who was accused of shouting at staff.