Prince Charles and his High Grove of Diana worship

To most of us, a garden is at best a hobby and at worst a chore that needs doing. But for Prince Charles, the garden plays a much larger role in his life. Because if we interpret the symbolisms and his own pronouncements correctly, it looks as if High Grove is his expression of devotion to an ancient and cruel goddess: Diana.

A magical garden

The goddess Diana at Highgrove

Tucked away in the verdant heart of the Cotswolds in England lies a modest, but well tended and impeccably kept country estate. Its Georgian windows overlook a garden that is famous for its ode to nature: rambling meadows of wild flowers, a thoughtfully placed sun garden and an eccentric Victorian 'stumpery' of upside down tree roots entwined into an artistic tangle. Dotted around the meandering path are works of natural art that effortlessly blend in with the prevalent magic atmosphere. The estate is called Highgrove, and the lord of the manor is Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the throne.

But as visitors admire the Highgrove gardens' beauty and environmentalists laud the Prince's views on conservation and sustainable management, all is not as it seems. Because Prince Charles' garden has a carefully concealed secret. Craftily blended into seemingly innocent and idyllic greenery, it has some disturbingly dark symbolism woven into the very heart of this grove.

The wooing of lady Diana Spencer
Only forty years ago Highgrove House was a bland and unimposing feature in an equally uninspiring landscape, until three spiritually minded and self-proclaimed 'priestesses' of gardening persuaded Prince Charles to purchase the forlorn property in 1980 and create an ecological garden that was years ahead of its time. Then, only months after the acquisition, one of these three muses, close confidante and special friend Camilla Parker-Bowles, introduced lady Diana Spencer to the princely gardener. Diana, a shy virgin with a close relationship to her father Earl Spencer, was deemed the right material to become a suitable wife to Charles. The reticent young woman was to be the perfect companion to the heir to the throne. A future queen. She was to complement him and share with him a keen interest in nature, hunting, architecture, music and the arts. But as we know, the fairy tale wedding was to end in heartache and grief, or as Charles wrote to former First Lady Nancy Reagan: a Greek tragedy.

The mismatch
In this article I will try and reconstruct the real reason why a bachelor prince, surrounded and cosseted by worldly wise and available women agreed to marry an impressionable young bride who had little in common with him. Her new husband's unusual gardening project held no interest for her, and she abhorred the hunt. She was uneducated in the finer points of architecture and art, and her modern taste in music clashed with his appreciation of classical music. Observers made the assumption that she was chosen for her lineage and virginity, to provide suitable offspring for the throne, but with my research I hope to present a different but truly disturbing dimension to the choices Charles made. What was the real reason for enticing Diana into Highgrove and its mysterious gardens? Read more here