Kate Middleton Shares "Heartbreaking" Parenting Struggle at the Chelsea Flower Show

Kate Middleton helped design a new Back to Nature Garden for the Chelsea Flower Show. Kate hopes the garden will help fix a heartbreaking parenting struggle she's noticed in herself and others.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019 - Press Day
(Image credit: Karwai Tang)

This week, Kate Middleton unveiled her Back to Nature Garden, which she helped design with landscape architects Andree Davies and Adam White. The Duchess of Cambridge took on the project as a way to help encourage children to spend more time outdoors and, according to Kate herself, this goal is part of a "heartbreaking" struggle for parents everywhere.

As part of her research for the project, Kate said she spoke with parents and other caretakers about helping children grow through time spent outdoors. According to Express, before the Garden's debut, Kate explained her process:

"It has been reaffirming and immensely heartening to hear from the parents and carers you work with about what they need, and what they want for the children in their care.

It was abundantly clear—universally —that regardless of location, demographic or circumstance, all parents share the wish for their children to grow up happy, healthy, and equipped to be able to take every opportunity that comes their way.

"It is heartbreaking to know that there is a long way to go to realizing this wish."

Kate also shared a sweet Instagram post and a photo of herself smiling on a swing in honor of the Back to Nature Garden's debut.

"In recent years I have focussed much of my work on the early years, and how instrumental they are for outcomes later in life. I believe that spending time outdoors when we are young can play a role in laying the foundations for children to become happy, healthy adults," Kate said in the post, via Kensington Palace.

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Kayleigh Roberts
Weekend Editor

Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.