Dominic West may be all set to play the Prince of Wales in Netflix hit The Crown – but it’s his wife who has a much better idea of what life is really like for the heir to the throne.
For The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a charming – and rather unexpected – friendship has blossomed between Catherine FitzGerald and Prince Charles.
It may seem like an unusual alliance, but Catherine is a member of the Irish aristocracy – and as a landscape gardener she shares a love of horticulture with the famously green-fingered Prince.
A charming – and rather unexpected – friendship has blossomed between Catherine FitzGerald and Prince Charles
‘It’s rather sweet,’ a source said. ‘They have forged a bond over their mutual love of gardening.’
Catherine, 50, is also a neighbour of Charles, living with West about 14 miles from his Highgrove country pile.
It was outside that Wiltshire home where she and West staged an awkward kiss for the paparazzi last year, after The Wire actor was seen canoodling with his co-star Lily James during a trip to Rome.
While cynics scoffed at their handwritten statement saying ‘Our marriage is strong and we’re very much together’, it is a sentiment that has endured. Just last month, Catherine spoke lovingly of her husband, telling an interviewer: ‘We are totally devoted to each other.’
Her other passion is gardening, which is how she struck up her friendship with Charles.
Catherine is a member of the Irish aristocracy – and as a landscape gardener she shares a love of horticulture with the famously green-fingered Prince
She was chosen to redesign the 100-acre gardens at Hillsborough Castle, the Royal Family’s official residence in Northern Ireland, and met the Prince at Clarence House in September 2014 to discuss the project. And she was personally thanked by the Prince in his speech to mark the successful reopening of the estate in 2019.
One of her tasks was to restore the castle’s Granville Garden, created in the 1940s by Charles’s great-aunt, Lady Rose Bowes-Lyon.
In an interview at the time, she said: ‘Horticulture is my passion, the craft of gardening, more so than the design. I want to pass that passion on, especially to children, to get them enthusiastic.’
Charles also worked with Catherine on a project in Romania.
The Prince has long been an advocate for maintaining traditional villages in the country, and when he launched a restoration of Apafi manor house in Transylvania, Catherine was called in to work on the garden. Her website states: ‘The brief was to research the garden of the recently restored 17th Century manor house, built as a hunting lodge on the outskirts of the village of Malancrav.’
It was outside that Wiltshire home (pictured) where she and West staged an awkward kiss for the paparazzi last year
She has also been a supporter of the Mihai Eminescu Trust, a charity set up to protect Transylvania’s cultural heritage, of which Charles was patron for 13 years.
The Prince and the gardener have less cerebral passions in common, too. When Catherine married West in Ireland in 2010, she hired the band Saloon Star to play at their reception – the same musicians who performed for Charles’s 60th birthday celebrations at Highgrove the year before.
Catherine was raised in Glin Castle, County Limerick, a fairytale property set in 400 acres of woodland that has been in her family for more than 700 years. She is the is eldest child of Desmond FitzGerald, the 29th Knight of Glin, who died in 2011 with no son to inherit his title.
Her father entertained the likes of Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull and poet Seamus Heaney there, and today Catherine and her husband sometimes let out the entire 15-bedroom castle and its 15 acres of pleasure grounds. Pop star Taylor Swift is among those who have reportedly paid £8,000 a night for the pleasure.
West, 51, has said of his wife’s love of the castle: ‘She has devoted 20 years to the garden. It’s at the core of her being.’
In March, Catherine, who trained at the Royal Horticultural Society, told Tatler magazine: ‘I can’t persuade Dominic to move there altogether yet, but I’m working on it.’
West’s project with 32-year-old Lily James, The Pursuit Of Love, recently aired on BBC1, and as well as his reported role as Prince Charles in the next two series of The Crown, he has been cast in the next Downton Abbey film, due out in December.