William and Kate to visit Natural History Museum’s gardens

The Prince and Princess of Wales will visit the Natural History Museum to meet children taking part in learning programmes in the attraction’s gardens.

Kate, the museum’s patron, and William will chat to youngsters joining activities aimed at helping them connect with nature and boost biodiversity in central London.

The princess has spoken in the past about the importance of children spending time in the natural world and helped create the family-friendly Back To Nature play garden that was exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2019.

She also urged society to “reconnect to nature and celebrate a new dawn within our hearts” in a voiceover for Spring, the first of her series of social media videos celebrating the seasons released earlier this year.

The gardens opened in 2024 featuring grassland, wetland and woodland habitats and are said to serve as a living laboratory, where visitors and scientists can identify and monitor wildlife in an urban environment.

During their visit William and Kate will be shown how cutting-edge technology is being used in the garden to inform the museum’s conservation and research biodiversity projects. 

A network of sensors collects environmental data which is used with environmental DNA to build a picture of all forms of life in the gardens.

The couple will join schoolchildren from Lewisham in south London who will take part in a pond dipping session, before meeting students from Manchester who have been creating new habitats on their school grounds through the National Education Nature Park initiative.

More than 7,500 schools, colleges and nurseries have got involved in the project to transform their grounds into nature-rich spaces – boosting biodiversity, green skills and wellbeing – under the project led by the museum working with the Royal Horticultural Society and commissioned by the Department for Education.