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The Princess of Wales has revealed Prince William is “passionate” about gardening during a solo public appearance north-east of London.
Kate, who is patron of the Forward Trust, shared the revelation while visiting Garon Park in Southend, Essex, on Thursday, where the charity hosts weekly gardening sessions for the recovering addicts it supports.
The princess was shown around the cricket ground, which has a wellbeing walk and gardening area where people in the Forward Trust’s Southend Treatment and Recovery Service (Stars) can go to walk and talk, or try their hand at gardening.
Kate lauded the greenspace as a “fantastic environment” and told Liam King, who leads conservation at the park: “Spaces like this are so vital for lots of different organisations to be able to come together and use. Often people don’t know where to go.”
The princess said the outdoors is “so vital for healing”, adding: “I should have my husband here; he knows a lot (about gardening), he’s really passionate”.
Asked by Mr King if she does any gardening, Kate said: “A little bit.”
The princess later spoke to people about the importance of “understanding the root causes” of addiction and “starting the conversation”.
She met service users including recovering alcoholic Steph Sampson, who told the princess how in the depths of her addiction she lied to her children about her alcohol consumption.
“I found out that there was a trauma that I buried so deep that I didn’t think was a problem, but actually it really was,” she told the princess on Thursday.
“I had counselling for that, which was a massive sigh of relief.”
Ms Sampson, 45, of Leigh-on-Sea, told Kate of a moving letter her daughter Mia, 21, wrote to her begging her to give up alcohol, which was a turning point, and she has now been sober for more than six months with the help of the Forward Trust.
Kate congratulated Ms Sampson for her hard work and said “I bet”, when Ms Sampson said her children are “so proud” of her.
Ms Sampson, who is now a peer mentor at Stars, told reporters Kate was “very touched” by her story.
“You could tell she (the Princess of Wales) was genuinely pleased for me, and (she) could tell that I had come a long way,” she said.
Last November, ahead of the 2026 Addiction Awareness Week, Kate called for the “stigma” faced by those with addictions to end and for society to show “compassion and love” to those dependent on drugs, alcohol or gambling.
Kate said society’s experience of addiction was “shaped by fear, shame and judgement” and urged people to have open conversations and bring the issue “out of the shadows,”.
“Addiction is not a choice, or a personal failing, but a complex mental health condition that should be met with empathy and support. But still, even now in 2025, people’s experience of addiction is shaped by fear, shame and judgement. This needs to change,” she said.
“The stigma surrounding those who face addiction allows it to thrive behind closed doors, impacting families and communities, and ultimately ruining lives. Many of us will know someone who is struggling with an addiction.
“Now is the moment to show our compassion and love to help them, or their friends and family, to reach out to organisations like The Forward Trust for support.”
Kate launched the first Addiction Awareness Week in 2021 on behalf of the trust.
For this year’s campaign week, which began on Saturday and runs until Friday, the Forward Trust is aiming to start 17,000 conversations about addiction to mark the number of lives lost to drug- or alcohol- related causes in the UK each year.
