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

[vera99]

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

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen such a high percentage of OP posts on a thread before (except when an OP was having an ongoing crisis in their personal life). About 650 posts in total, and nearly 120 of them are by the OP.

The Royal Family is clearly a very big deal in OP's life.

If I am allowed to say so, I think it makes a refreshing change from the usual royal devotees leading their frequent and numerous threads. It evens up the balance a bit! Nice to see a few alternative viewpoints being aired imho!

Yes, and I applaud an OP paying attention to her own thread. Too many times, they disappear!

I have no idea whether working for RF is a pleasure or a pain but if you value your garden you can't- hire someone who doesn't know what they're doing. For instance, a neighbour hired 'experienced professional tree surgeons' to remove 2 trees. They did so and also, unasked, removed a third, a venerable apple that supported a clematis montana that flowered prolifically in Spring. Brought joy to many, known locally as the Bride. Not my tree but I felt furious. Such a loss and irreplaceable. So, no ragwort please and hands off my plants unless you know what you're doing. But pay them properly.

Manchester Evening news has a breaking news alert

Manchester Evening News

BREAKING: Buckingham Palace announces King will address the nation next week

It's a VJ commemoration speech.

Thank you I spent far too much time on here back in 2022 and was, to my own relief, briefly banned. It helped me step away for a while. I was unbanned a few weeks ago.
For the record, I’m a Republican, though some doubt my sincerity because I occasionally find myself defending Harry and Meghan, given the sheer volume of hate they seem to attract around here.I had no idea this thread was still running !

As a sallow youth in the late '70s, I picked up this book at a jumble sale, and it’s helped shape my views on the matter ever since.RIP Willie - you're in my DNA now ! What a great speech from 1981 every single world old fella !

As a sallow youth in the late '70s,

Callow?
Or were you really self conscious about your skin? Often a problem for youths, I understand.

https://archive.ph/wVCtV

How low can King Charles go?
At the King’s country house, everything has a price-tag.

Now a King with expanded royal duties, Charles has handed the day-to-day management of Highgrove to its executive director, Constantine Innemée. The garden sanctuary has become a rural hypermarket and “space” raising funds through tours, private dinners, black-tie galas, classes and branded goods. Highgrove sells jams (£7.95), plant pots (£230), seeds (£7.95), picnic hampers (£150), and a “Highgrove x Burberry Castleford Trench Coat” (£2,490), as well as a £4,950 made-to-order, almost life-sized Irish moiled cow sculpture woven from British willow and bronze wire. The outward expression of Charles’s inner self was also a commercial opportunity.

Whatever was sacred about the place has become, if not profane, then at least profitable. Turnover at Highgrove last year was £6m, according to accounts for the King’s Foundation, higher than any of Charles’s other properties. The King and Innemée have had their reward: Highgrove Gardens, Tripadvisor informs us, is now number two “out of ten things to do in Tetbury”. Somebody must be buying those cow sculptures. But who is coughing up for the £180 “Wellness Day”?

Over lunch (chicken breast and vegetables, all organic) we discussed Charles’s artworks. One woman said she felt he had “really come into his own” since becoming King. A recent Sunday Times report revealing terrible staffing problems at Highgrove was not mentioned. I wondered if my fellow wellness-seekers read newspapers, or rather favoured books about trauma or following yogis on Instagram. They resembled their King: “getting into ecology”; worshipping an amorphous Nature that could threaten but never disappoint them. They left, smiling, happy, stretched out – all ideal subjects. There was the future of the British monarchy: the Crown that once demanded service in war now only wants £180 and a convincing geranium impression, and only if asked nicely enough. I suppose that’s progress, whatever “progress” means.

Unlike As Ever it's in stock - get stuck in before it sells out for autumn !

www.highgrovegardens.com/products/burberry-x-highgrove-coat-various-colours

It’s also available on the Burberry website directly - it is priced in line with their trench coats generally (£1950-£2,700 is the range).

£5k for a life-sized cow art work sounds … reasonable if you are in the (small) market for such things? Made to order sculpture is never cheap.

A true Carolean, of course, should be capable of executing a Highgrove-compliant yogic geranium impression without so much as dislodging a petal whereas I, alas, would almost certainly disgrace the endeavour. And as for parting with £180 merely to confirm my horticultural shortcomings, I think not. At best, I might hazard a ragwort, though such a vulgar display would doubtless have me banished from the harmonic circle of connection - a sacred perimeter whose breach, as we all know, is beyond mortal repair. Still, I daresay homeopathy could mount a spirited attempt, provided one were content with a mere memory of geranium in the bottle a la Sting !

But who is coughing up for the £180 “Wellness Day”?

Tourists from London who would be charged more than double that for a Spa Day at a top London hotel, I imagine? Check out the spas at Raffles, The Corinthia, The Berkeley or the Dorchester. And if you look for more local competition, the Highgrove Wellness Day is cheaper than a just a facial at Soho Farmhouse)

(Again, these are just examples of experiences and goods that are priced in line with their markets).

One thing the two-bar-electric-fire Queen Elizabeth II achieved, through a lifetime of scrupulously saving every penny, was to instil in her children a near-sacred respect for money though, in the case of Prince Andrew, this sometimes manifested as an urgent need for rather a lot more of it. But, as the Beatles reminded us, money can’t buy you love… although, in certain palaces, it can apparently secure a ski chalet, a generous cash settlement, and several implausibly well-connected new “friends” whose company one might later regret.

I imagine the Archbishop doesn't major on the widow's mite - at least not in earshot of the Monarch.