In 2022, Queen Elizabeth will celebrate her Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years since she took the throne. While it’s inevitable that some finery will be involved—maybe she’ll send some messages with spectacular jewelry—one of her biggest initiatives is much more earthy. In May, the queen joined with Prince Charles to announce a program called Plant a Tree for the Jubilee, urging people across the United Kingdom to celebrate the Windsors by improving the environment.
On Friday, the queen and Charles did their first in-person engagement to promote the program at an elementary school near the family’s Balmoral estate in Scotland. Wearing a raincoat and a leaf-patterned silk scarf in her hair, the queen joined with her son to sit in on a forest school session in the cricket field at Crathie Primary School. Then the pair dug a hole to plant a new copper beech tree, and the 95-year-old monarch really did pull her weight.
According to Hello, a few students presented the queen with a card, which she called “very kind,” and Charles joked about the tree’s future. “Let’s hope it will survive,” he said.
The tabloid added that the school has a tradition of presenting the queen with a card at the end of every summer she spends at Balmoral. “It was a lovely occasion for us,” Lilian Field, the school’s head teacher, said. “This is the first time we’ve given her it in person.
The jubilee tree-planting project is just one of the initiatives begun under the Queen’s Green Canopy, an organization that is also doing a variety of projects to raise awareness about the U.K.’s ancient woodlands. Charles is the group’s patron, and its board is composed of forestry and environmental experts. The organization is encouraging people to begin planting their trees between October and March, and it has supplied a step-by-step guide on its website.
Charles began his week in London, and on Tuesday, he attended the premiere of the new James Bond movie No Time To Die, accompanied by Prince William, Kate Middleton, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. After the tree-planting session on Friday, he spent the afternoon opening a Johnnie Walker visitor center in Edinburgh. He also met students participating in a bartending course. The group designed a personal cocktail for Charles, which they called the Duke of Rothesay, after the title he takes on when he is in Scotland.
— Met Gala 2021: See the Best-Dressed Stars on the Red Carpet
— The Trials of Diet Prada
— Emmys 2021: See All of the Red-Carpet Looks
— Anthony Bourdain’s Longtime Director and Producer Releases Memoir
— The 2021 Met Gala’s American Theme Winners: Who Did It Best?
— Inside the Hermès Workshop That Makes Its Iconic Bags
— Love Is a Crime: Inside One of Hollywood’s Wildest Scandals
— The Best Beauty Moments From the 2021 Emmys
— Ted Lasso: How to Dress Like Keeley and Rebecca
— From the Archive: Influencers on the Coast of Utopia
— Sign up for “The Buyline” to receive a curated list of fashion, books, and beauty buys in one weekly newsletter.