King Charles won’t touch two vegetables (Image: Getty)
King Charles’s former gardener has said the monarch “banned” two vegetables and insisted carrots were grown to an exact size. David Pearce, 29, worked for the King in his kitchen garden, cultivating plants for him to eat.
He revealed famously green-fingered Charles took a keen interest in the fruits and vegetables that landed on his plate – but squash and courgettes were off limits.
David, the youngest curator of Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens, said: “I spent about a year working for His Royal Highness in the kitchen garden, growing fruit and vegetables and wonderful things that went into his dinners and lunches.”
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David Pearce worked at King Charles’s Highgrove estate (Image: SWNS)
He added: “We were growing mostly things he requested himself – a whole bed of salad and two whole beds of asparagus – he was very keen on that.
“Things like cauliflower, and he particularly liked his crudité carrots – we would have to grow them to a particular size, of your little finger.”
He said the King particularly liked spinach, adding: “We grew onions, leeks and Florence fennel. It was mostly working with him and his individual preferences. But squash was off the cards, and absolutely no courgettes.”
David recalled being a “feral” youth, growing up on the edge of the New Forest. He said: “I was running around having a wonderful time. Everything was wild and wonderful and exotic.
“Weighing up my career options, I loved the idea of being outside, growing things – the science and the art of it. And on a bit of a whim, I applied for an apprenticeship at Ventnor Botanic Garden on the Isle of Wight.”
He worked in the gardens at Wisley – the Royal Horticultural Society’s flagship garden in Surrey. It runs one of the oldest horticultural training programmes in the world.
After graduating during the pandemic he found a job at Highgrove, the private residence of King Charles and Queen Camilla, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire.
Tucked into woodland, Highgrove’s one-acre walled garden is geometrically arranged, dripping with blossom in spring, and run along organic principles.
David describes his royal boss’s eco credentials as ahead of their time.
He said: “When everyone else was primping lawns, he was cultivating wildflower meadows as far as the eye could see.”
There was no spray – instead, electric gadgets for zapping pests and all manner of inventive methods for keeping on top of weeds without reaching for the chemicals.
David said the then Prince of Wales was not always on site as it was a period when preparations were quietly underway for “the big transition”.
He added that when Charles was there, he insisted on a morning walk around the garden.
The gardener said: “We would have the opportunity to walk around with him. He would tell us what particular things he wanted, when he wanted them.”
From Highgrove, David moved to Whatley Manor, a five-star hotel in the Cotswolds with gardens grown in the arts and crafts tradition. He now works at Abbotsbury near Weymouth, Dorset.
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