On Wednesday, King Charles and Queen Camilla visited the one-day-only Sandringham Flower Show in Norfolk. They arrived in a carriage and seemingly had a great time chatting with flower-show enthusiasts. One man named Phil Smith even showed Camilla his special tattoos with Camilla and Charles’s royal cyphers.
You would think, given the recently-published Times of London story about Charles’s Highgrove garden chaos, that Charles would avoid gardening/greenery events for a time. I would guess that Charles’s people advised him to keep this appearance though. Even though the Times story got wider play, it doesn’t feel like it fundamentally moved the dial on public perception of Charles. Sure, it’s astounding that Charles refuses to pay his gardeners well, and that he treats them with such rudeness and disdain to the point there’s been a mass exodus. It’s astounding that Charles suggested that they replace the gardeners with volunteering seniors and Ukrainian refugees. It’s astounding that the situation is so bad IN A GARDEN that crisis-managers were hired and investigations were launched, and there was a recommendation that gardeners should receive mental health support. Well, following the Times’ report, a source made a huffy statement to Vanity Fair:
A spokesman for the King’s Foundation told the Sunday Times: “At The King’s Foundation, we strive to be an exemplary employer and are proud to regularly report very high satisfaction rates in our annual staff survey. Our staff turnover is well below the national average, as is the number of formal grievances raised.”
Buckingham Palace did not comment on the article, which the newspaper said is based on interviews with eight sources who have worked as gardeners or “have detailed knowledge of the estate’s inner workings.”
However, a source close to King Charles told Vanity Fair, “There seems to be quite a few disgruntled former staff members who are out to make trouble for the King’s Foundation. The King loves Highgrove and is very proud of everything he has created here.”
[From Vanity Fair]
“Our staff turnover is well below the national average…” Eleven out of twelve full-time gardeners quit!! How is that not ABOVE the national average? “Disgruntled former staff members” huh? But when disgruntled former staff members were making vague, unspecific accusations about the Duchess of Sussex (she “bullied” people but they could never explain how, she looked at them and made them cry), their stories were amplified and taken as gospel! It’s weird how the Highgrove story was full of really specific details about things Charles said, did and wrote, and it’s being waved off as “making trouble.”
