Miscellaneous Royal Facts . The story of the Buckingham Palace garden . . The site where Buckingham Palace now stands was originally a mulberry garden planted by King James I in which to rear silkworms. . In 1608 the King, in an attempt to provide impetus to the British silk industry, issued an edict encouraging the cultivation of mulberry trees and paid £ 935 ‘for the charge of 4 acres of land taken for His Majesty’s use, near to the Palace of Westminster, for the planting of Mulberry trees…’ . Unfortunately James chose to grow the black, not the white mulberry, and silk production never took off in Britain, but one of the original trees still survives, and bears fruit, in the Palace garden. . The design of the modern garden dates from 1825, when George IV began the conversion of the former Buckingham House to a Palace. He appointed William Townsend Aiton, head of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to oversee the remodelling of the grounds and the creation of the lake; many of the trees planted under Aiton’s supervision still form the structure of the garden today. . When her children were young, Queen Victoria would play skittles with them in the garden and take them into the kitchen garden where they were allowed to eat their fill of fruit. Later, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth cleared many of the dense Victorian shrubberies themselves and introduced a wide selection of decorative flowering trees and scented shrubs. . . . #Miscellaneousroyalfacts #RoyalFacts #Facts #buckinghampalace #Gardens #Garden #Palace #Royalty #Monarchy #HouseofWindsor #History #london #England #RoyalFamily #Royal #BritishMonarchy #QueenElizabethII #ElizabethII #HerMajesty #princephillip #dukeofedinburgh #Gardening #London #londonhistory #RoyalHistory #thequeen👑 #thequeen #Flowers #westminster #CityofLondon (at Buckingham Palace) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9_nuo5DnKS/?igshid=17teqjor7vmut