Highgrove: An Experiment in Organic Gardening and Farming

Prince Charles is all about high quality, in everything he does. In time he will be followed by others!

Well said Your Royal Highness.This book is not only about Highgrove,the Prince of Wales' estate.But what it is really about is the transition from conventional into organic gardening and farming.Prince Charles has a lot of influence and connections to sources that can only help this planet to start healing.A lot of industrial methods of farming techniques took so much out of the soil,poisoning it with chemicals,and now it is time for us to gather and start changing our actions,and putting back what we took out of it.We need to think that every gesture has a consequence.A price to pay.And that is why people of this earth are very lucky to have an ambassador such as the Prince of Wales.His battle to make nations understand these consequences is a hard task.Of course we do not all have his kind of ressources.We also do not have a team of gardeners to weed and manage our garden.But think about it this way.We also do not have an agenda as charged as Prince Charles'.So every gardener,every farmer can do what this book preaches and prays for.Respect and listen to the land that is yours.As big or as small a parcel it may be.We can do it.I learned about the old ways of farming.Why they put the cows on a straw diet before calving.How to increase the chance of twin or triplet lambs.How to prepare the farming season,when to cut hay and why to do it this way......and the list goes on.This book contains things the old folks teach us.Traditions handed down fron generation to generation.Things that you would not usually find in books."Highrove:Portrait of an Estate" is a Jewel.It should belong in every book collection,may it be as a coffee table book,but also as a reference for times to come.

HRH The Prince of Wales' position in life presents him with opportunities to speak and be listened to. Similarly, his name on the cover of this book, and the beautiful color photos that illustrate it, may get many readers to give it an initial browse. But what they'll find inside is much different than the guided tour of a garden they may be expecting (for that, they should check out HRH's The Garden at Highgrove 2000). Instead, it's a manifesto of sorts -- a defiant defense of an organic approach to agriculture that is a polite but unmistakable challenge to agribusiness orthodoxy. The parts of this book I found most interesting were the first and last chapters, the parts penned by the Prince himself. They give a bit of his personal history with the Highgrove estate, his goals in converting from traditional to organic farming, and some of what he encountered after doing so. The last chapter, particularly, also lays out some of the lessons he's learned so far (circa 1993, of course) and how he believes it applies to the larger questions confronting agriculture in the UK. The earlier chapters in Mr. Clover's section are also interesting, focusing as they do on The Prince's decision to purchase Highgrove and some of his early steps in "going organic." The latter chapters, unfortunately, become more and more weighted with questions of politics and policy, as he argues the economic and environmental benefits of organic farming. These chapters remind the reader how incredibly interventionist both the British government and the European Union are in matters that, in this country, are regarded as far more private. The restrictions on farmland use, especially, struck me as remarkably onerous. If that's what "Rio" and related international accords (still more Kyoto) bring in their wake, Americans should read and ponder these chapters very carefully before we assent to them ourselves. The Prince's chapters, especially, reminded me a lot of American agriculture writer Gene Logsdon, author of Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream among other works. I hope, in fact, that HRH has read some of Mr. Logsdon's titles -- I think he'll find much in there to admire, and much to think about. On a stylistic level, I enjoy reading The Prince's prose -- I did in A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture and did so again here. His is an entertaining and very personal pen, articulate, reasonable, self-effacing, and not afraid to take a counter-cultural stand. I was disappointed to see that some of The Prince's recommendations also veered into the government-interventionist, but to that degree at least I suppose he is a product of his society and era. On the whole, this book may not convince large-scale farmers to abandon traditional agribusiness and convert to organic approaches, but I suspect that was not the authors' intent. If, however, it succeeds (or succeeded) in getting consumers and/or casual gardeners or farmers to think a bit mor

I first knew of Highgrove when I read that Charles had purchased it with an eye to his tremendous interest in organic farming. "Another beautiful country home for the Royals," I mused. But, after reading this book, I began to realize that Highgrove was more than a mere physical place but instead seems to be almost magical in it's beauty. The photos are breathtaking for anyone who loves natural beauty. Prince Charles's effort at organic farming is nothing short of inspirational for all who respect our beautiful planet. And the house itself...... is a dream to behold.......