Queen Camilla candidly reveals her favorite pastime, but it makes her 'creak and groan'

Queen Camilla revealed her favorite pastime during a trip to the Armagh Robinson Library during her tour of Northern Ireland.

• King Charles and Queen Camilla are currently on a post-coronation tour in Northern Ireland.
• On Thursday, May 25, the royal couple visited Armagh and Enniskillen.
• In other royal news, Carole Middleton proves houndstooth is always in style with printed pink dress that screams summer.

On Thursday, King Charles and Queen Camilla visited Armagh and Enniskillen as part of their royal post-coronation tour of Northern Ireland. In the morning, the King and Queen attended separate engagements.

The Queen visited the 252-year-old Armagh Robinson Library and looked at Joseph Paxton’s Magazine of Botany, a book that is a collection of illustrated advice for gardeners. The Times reported that while looking at this book the Queen opened up about her favorite pastime, gardening.  

Speaking to members of Dementia NI at this event, the Queen revealed, “I love gardening. I’m a passionate gardener." The Queen then revealed that although she finds the hobby very calming, it has now started to have an effect on her body. "And it’s very therapeutic. But I always stay too long. Everything creaks and groans," she said.

The Queen has been a fan of gardening for some time and has often spoken about her love of being in nature.

In an interview with her son Tom Parker Bowles in You magazine, the Queen revealed that she loves growing her own vegetables and she is rather competitive with her husband, the King. "I love the vegetable garden. I'm very proud of my white peaches. My husband is an excellent gardener, and we're quite competitive about our fruit and vegetables."

Again, in a special guest appearance on BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World back in 2021, Camilla spoke about the healing nature of gardening. 

"I think gardens got people through Covid. They realized how special a garden was and what they could do with it,” said the Queen. "It was a sort of spiritual experience for them, they discovered a sort of affinity with the soil - you can go into a garden and you can completely lose yourself, you don’t have to think about anything else, you’re surrounded by nature, you’ve got birds singing, you’ve got bees buzzing about - there is something very healing about gardens."

Later during the engagement, Camilla chatted to students from Drelincourt School, who learned English as a second language and were volunteering in the Library. "This is very special what you are doing. The whole country would collapse without volunteers. Thank goodness there is a lot of you about. Volunteers also get as much out as they give."

"You speak very good English," she then said as another warm compliment to the children - some of whom had only arrived in the country a fortnight ago.