Prince Charles's Ideal Home

He may have spent much of his life in palaces and castles, but the Prince of Wales is passionate about sustainable living and the need for cleaner, greener houses. Many of his ideas were the starting point for the Prince’s Arts and Crafts House at this year's Ideal Home Show in London which he visited (left, with Prince's Foundation Ambassador George Clarke) after the exhibition's official opening. Although the house is inspired by the 19th c movement which concentrated on quality, handmade design and furnishings, it's in tune with current environmental thinking and 70% more energy efficient than building regulations require. Its thick walls and natural materials such as clay, wood, lime and wool will keep it warm in winter and cool in summer, and the architects say its one wood-burning stove should be enough to heat the whole 2-storey house.

The Prince believes in fostering British craft, and this is evident in the décor, which includes stained glass windows, lino-cut wallpaper, hand-made tiles and traditional joinery.

 Out in the garden, visitors could see British-sourced materials, crafts and plants, with a strong emphasis on the edible. Planting also includes the Amelanchier, or ‘June Berry’ which flowers early and has edible berries in June, and Erythronium ‘dog’s-tooth violet’, another early flowering plant that thrives in the shade of small trees.

The house (left) will eventually end up on a residential site, where one lucky family will be able to live in a royal dream home. But there could be more - the Prince's Foundation is hoping to interest a commercial builder in the design.

http://www.princes-foundation.org/

How Prince Charles's old curtains went shopping

Claire Morsman is a woman with a mission: to get us to swap our plastic carrier bags for reuseable cloth ones.
I met her last year at the “Garden Party to Make a Difference” – a festival of ideas to encourage sustainable living, organised by Prince Charles’s Start organisation and held in the gardens adjoining his London home, Clarence House.
She was there with her sewing machine, showing people how to make simple shopping bags from unwanted fabric such as old curtains – including some donated by the Prince (pictured).
Now she’s back at the 2011 Start festival, being held over the August bank holiday weekend at Kew Gardens, in SW London – and has more royal curtains to turn into bags for visitors.
The idea of creating reuseable carriers from unwanted material came when Claire saw how plastic bags were clogging up the water and killing marine life around the houseboat where she lives. With the help of her mother, she designed a simple bag pattern which her husband put on the internet, and began encouraging people to sew their own. Each bag takes around 15 – 20 minutes, and folds down to a small square which can be kept in a handbag or pocket. She sent one to Prince Charles. He liked the idea, invited her to the Start festival, and donated some curtains to be transformed. Bag-making groups have now sprung up all over the world. Claire keeps track of the number of times the pattern is downloaded, and it’s thought that the 100,000th Morsbag will be sewn up this autumn. The bags are given away free to shoppers (something she calls “sociable guerrilla bagging”) and have potentially stopped millions of plastic ones from going into circulation.
More details, and the pattern, are at http://www.morsbags.com/html/
Start@Kew, with family entertainment and dozens of demonstrations of simple, sustainable living ideas, runs until August 29. Admission is included in the Kew entrance ticket. See: http://www.startuk.org/

A most unusual royal garden party...

Gigantic sheep climbing a ladder to insulate a loft, a string of washing flapping in the breeze, reusable shopping bags being made from old royal curtains......
Not what you'd expect at a garden party.
But the Garden Party to Make a Difference, in the adjoining gardens of Clarence House, Lancaster House and Marlborough House, in central London is the brainchild of Prince Charles, and aims to show how just a few small steps can help build a sustainable future. So it's out with the champagne glasses and in with resuseable waterbottles for guests as they explore more than 100 displays on everything from building green homes to saving electricity and growing your own veg.
I went down for the morning, but ended up spending most of the day there.

I loved this Ark art installation (above), where children from 10 Oxfordshire primary schools show what they'd take if they were to sail away to a low-carbon future. Garden Organic was giving away seedlings of rocket and chard to encourage visitors to grow something edible, and the RSPB demonstrated how to build a nest box from recycled materials.

There are serious messages too. The washing-line of t-shirts (opposite a thatched summerhouse built for Queen Mary) seeks to persuade people to dry their clothes naturally - using a tumble dryer every two days could cost over £100 a year. And another sign reads: "Be thrifty with your food" - 8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by UK households every year, costing the average family £680.

I was tempted by almost everything on sale in the Farmers' Market, and admired the line-up of electric eco-cars. It was also a real thrill to be able to see first-hand what Prince Charles has achieved in the grounds of Clarence House since he moved in after the Queen Mother's death in 2002. (More to come on the blog about this and the recycling of his curtains.)

The festival is part of the Prince's Start initiative, which has seen him touring the country in the royal train (which runs on bio-fuel) looking at projects that help the environment and discussing with business leaders how companies can source goods ethically and recycle more.

Entrance to the Garden Party to Make a Difference is on the corner of Green Park and the Mall and is open from 10 am - 6pm until Sept 19. Tickets cost £15 for adults.
More details: http://www.startuk.org/