Coronation Planters presented to His Majesty The King

This joint project between the Plumbers’ Company and the Gardeners’ Company was started in 2023 to commemorate the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on 6 May 2023. King Charles is an Honourary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners and Queen Camilla is an Honourary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers.

After many months of design and construction, the Planters were delivered to Sandringham. This whole process has been recorded in a short video, which even His Majesty has seen.

The day dawned bright, chilly and sunny for the presentation party to assemble at Sandringham on the Monday morning. We were honoured to spend half an hour with His Majesty discussing the project with him, before finishing with a warming glass of Sandringham sloe gin each, with which we toasted His Majesty and wished Him and Her Majesty a “Merry Christmas”.

The party in the main picture is “L to R: John Marsen, MD of Bernhards’ Nurseries, which supplied the plants; Liveryman Eddie McCourt, volunteer and demonstrator at Amberley who helped cast the planters; Liveryman Peter Cheesman, head volunteer and demonstrator at Amberley, who lead the casting team; Past Master David Hamilton, Chairman of the PMWT at Amberley; Nicholas Woolf, Immediate Past Master Gardener and the Gardeners’ Company lead for and initiator of the project; Charles Brooks, Master Plumber; HM The King; Cindy Peck, Master Gardener; Paul Nash, Past Master Plumber and overall lead for the project; Liveryman Michael Fitt, Gardeners’ Company and retired Deputy CEO of the Royal Parks; Steve Hodkinson, Past Master Plumber and Project Manager at the PMWT at Amberley; David Adams, Immediate Past Master Plumbers’ Company; and Tim Crawley, Art Workers Guild, who designed the Planters and helped construct the moulds”