Keen gardener Kate joins children's picnic she inspired as Chelsea Flower Show starts
22 May 2023, 14:32 | Updated: 22 May 2023, 15:01
The Princess of Wales dropped by the Chelsea Flower Show to jojn pupils enjoying its first children’s picnic.
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Kate, wearing a silk pink ME+EM shirt dress, joined children from 10 schools for the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) school gardening campaign ahead of the show’s launch.
The royal inspired the initiative during a conversation with the RHS in 2019, when she showed off her gardening, including a floral tribute to Diana.
She has long promoted children getting involved with nature and gardening and in 2019 she got Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis involved in the project by having them gather twigs, moss and logs from around their Norfolk home Anmer Hall that they would then use in the garden.
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Kate’s dress was previously worn by her mother, Carole, whose business with her husband Michael has been sold after it fell into administration.
They set up Party Piece Holdings in 1987 while they were seeking inspiration for Kate’s fifth birthday, but they sold the firm to Essex-based entrepreneur James Sinclair after months of speculation about the company's future.
Party Pieces Holdings, the parent company of the firm that once employed Kate, had racked up a deficit of £1.35 million and the Middletons failed to find new investors or a buyer willing to take on the company with the entirely of the debt.
Instead, the firm was bought by Teddy Tastic Bear, one of several businesses owned by entrepreneur James Sinclair, through a device known as a pre-pack administration.
This procedure allows an insolvent company to sell its assets without some of its liabilities before an administrator is appointed.
