Garden-Variety Chat Leaves Prince With a Tough Row to Hoe

Prince Charles, the target of ridicule because he admitted talking to his plants, remained unrepentant today.

As the heir to the British throne arrived for an engagement, a grocer tried to sell him some fruit and vegetables.

“But I said that I grew them myself and mine were a damned sight bigger because I instructed them to be,” Charles told his audience later.

The prince’s admission in a television documentary on Sunday that he talked to the plants in the garden of his country home to make them grow better drew mainly flippant commentaries in British newspapers.

Many reminded their readers that Charles’s ancestor, George III, who frequently talked to trees, died insane in 1820. Charles has said that George was his favorite king.