By Molly Claire Goddard
10:11am PST, Nov 14, 2025
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According to King Charles III's former butler
Grant Harrold, the monarch likes to get anything to satiate his green thumb. "He would always ask for things for the garden," the ex-staffer told
Daily Express. "He's previously asked for benches, plants and trees. Gardening is his real passion."
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Royal gardener
Jack Stooks backed up Grant Harrold's claim. "That's what he tends to put on his list," the greenery specialist told
Daily Express. "He would ask for trees, shrubs, roses and hedging. He would plant them at one of the royal gardens, either Clarence House, Buckingham Palace, Windsor, Sandringham or up in Scotland."
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Even Hollywood's biggest names know what's on King Charles III's wish list. "Elton John gave him an Indian bean tree, a golden Indian bean tree that used to grow at Highgrove, which unfortunately has now died," Jack Stooks said. "Pierce Brosnan and his wife [Keely Shaye Smith] gave the king a magnolia. The king planted it in the apple orchard by the Orchard Room. It's a massive tree now. They actually once came around the garden and I met them both, and they were just so lovely and down to earth and normal. We showed them the tree that they'd gifted him years before, which was really nice."
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King Charles III's love of gardening began when he and
Princess Anne were young. "My interest in gardening was always there," the 77-year-old said in a 2010
interview. "As a child my sister and I were given a little plot at Buckingham Palace at the back of the border for growing vegetables. But it's not until you have somewhere of your own that it becomes more possible. The thing about [Highgrove] was that it was a blank canvas, so I had to start from scratch."
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King Charles III also has a deep passion for environmental conservation. "Do we want to go down in history as the people who did nothing to bring the world back from the brink in time to restore the balance when we could have done? I don't want to," he said during a passionate speech about climate change at the World Economic Forum in 2020.
