Charles posed in his comfortable get-up ahead of an interview with BBC Radio 4's 'Gardeners' Question Time', marking the show's 60th anniversary. The prince often dons his camel-coloured wool coat - believed to have been a gift from Pakistan - for time pottering in the garden. In the interview, to be aired on Easter Sunday (08.04.07), listeners will hear the royal share his gardening tips with horticultural experts. Charles told the show's chairman Eric Robson that his love of gardening went back to when he was a boy and he shared a vegetable patch with sister Princess Anne in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
Charles slammed EU rules restricting the sale of historical varieties of seed, enforced to ensure customers do not get plants that aren't uniform. The prince said: 'What could be crazier than reducing ourselves to far too few varieties and finding, at the end of the day, that maybe they are then more subject to disease and complications? 'What could be crazier than having the kind of EU legislation which made it impossible to sell the seeds of many of these wonderful old varieties that people have developed over thousands of years?' The 58-year-old royal - a keen organic farmer - is reported to have spent £500,000 on the gardens at his Gloucestershire country home Highgrove. Taking the chance to wish 'Gardeners' Question Time' a 'happy birthday', Charles said the programme provided many people with 'endless useful information'. Eric described the prince as having 'a real passion that would strike a chord with thousands of gardeners up and down the country'.