The Nature of Royalty

Walk on into woodland and you find a mind-boggling collection of hostas interplanted with other perennials, as well as shrubs and trees, around a pond. As all hosta fans know, slugs devour the leafy plant, but here, late in the season, the vast majority are still looking whole and attractive. This is because the slugs and snails are kept in check by a host of natural predators, from songbirds to toads to hedgehogs, Howard said.

Beyond the pool, a classical folly holds a relief of his beloved grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Turn the corner and you see, amid lush, tropical-like foliage, a wall of salvaged and sculpted stone pieces, and one senses encountering a ruined temple in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Walk on, and you find the Stumpery, a Victorian conceit given contemporary meaning with the placements of old root stumps arranged in artful piles. They are of old chestnut and oak trees felled in a tempest that swept England 20 years ago. Bonelike, they impart a primal, almost menacing quality to this leafy glade. When Prince Philip toured it with his son, Philip is said to have muttered: "When are you going to set fire to this lot?"

The path leads to another classical temple forged of green oak, its pediment decorated with the bones of more trees. Here, a relief honors the poet Ted Hughes, whose brutal verse seems an odd fit for so sentimental a patron. But Hughes, as poet laureate, wrote many poems for royal occasions. And, interestingly, Hughes was a gentleman farmer who had seen destruction not just to the environment but to the way of life that mirrored Charles's formative view of England.

The infrastructure at Highgrove includes a rainwater collection system from house and outbuildings that holds 35,000 gallons, and a natural wetland sewage treatment system where aquatic plants are used to cleanse wastewater. Howard ends the tour in the compost yard near the stables, where organic waste is turned into a continual supply of top dressing and soil amendments that fulfill the central imperative here of feeding the soil, not the plant.

One of the newest features at Highgrove is a walled Islamic garden filled with Koranic symbolism. "The [whole] garden has all sorts of religions brought into it," said Junor. "There are different plants from different parts of the world. It' s not just a whole heap of plants made to put on a good show. It's saying something."

The book talks about the Highgrove experiment extended to his gardens at Clarence House, the prince's London headquarters, as well as Birkhall on the edge of the Balmoral Estate in Scotland. Here, writes Charles, "my darling wife has a keen eye for this garden and also for the cutting garden, from which she conjures exquisite flower arrangements."

But it is at Highgrove where Prince Charles has spent much of his life bringing nurture to nature. It is his official residence, his life's work, and where his heart is. He likes to be there "as much as possible," said Junor. "He's happiest there."

"I remember longing to heal the countryside," he wrote in 2001. "To bind up its wounds and to reclothe it in its rightful form."