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You can call her Chef Kate.
Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton headed into the great outdoors on Tuesday for a visit to King Henry’s Walk Garden in Islington. Donning a casual chic ensemble fit for gardening, including a tweet sports jacket and suede lace-up ankle boots, the mother of three kept cozy and comfortable as she visited with local residents and volunteers for the garden.
The royal also got to work, helping to craft birdhouses with children from St. Jude and St. Paul’s CE Primary School. Middleton also joined the young students and rolled out dough for pizza using the outdoor oven and ingredients harvested from the garden, including oregano, marjoram and rosemary. Yum!
However, Kate was stumped when a young girl had a question about Queen Elizabeth II‘s eating habits, according to People.
“Has the Queen ever had pizza?” the girl asked. “You know, that’s such a good question. I don’t know,” Middleton answered. “I don’t know. Maybe next time I see her, shall I ask?”
Report back, Kate!
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Before the visit was over, the Duchess of Cambridge was gifted a jar of honey produced by the garden’s bees. Middleton has long been an avid fan of gardening and being outside. In 2017, she joined a group of students from southwest London’s Robin Hood Primary School to check out their work with the Royal Horticultural Society’s campaign for school gardening, where she pulled on a pair of gardening gloves and planted winter bulbs with the youngsters.
“I’ve got such fond memories of being in the garden and being outside from my own childhood, and I’m sharing that with my own children, George and Charlotte, at the moment,” she said at the time. “What you have created here is really so special. Hopefully you’ll have lots of memories of your time here in the garden, looking for insects or planting bulbs…and I really hope you remember these special times for the rest of your lives.”
Middleton is taking her green thumb one step further this year as it has just been announced she designed her first Chelsea Flower Show garden on behalf of the Royal Horticultural Society. Collaborating with landscape architects Andree Davies and Adam White, Middleton designed the garden, titled the “RHS Back to Nature Garden,”with wild planting and natural materials to evoke a sense “of wonder and magic.”
Her work, which will be on display at the annual event in May, “has been inspired by childhood memories that are triggered by the natural world, as well as special moments that will be created and treasured by families now and in the future,” the RHS described.
As a Kensington Palace spokeswoman said, “The garden seeks to recapture for adults the sense of wonder and magic that they enjoyed as children, in addition to kindling excitement and a passion for nature in future generations.”