WHEN landscape gardener John Savins opened his Christmas gift from wife Gillian in 1990, he had no idea it would lead to him giving tuition to the future King of England.

She bought the 68-year-old a four-day hedge-laying course, beginning a journey that would make him one of Britain’s top hedge layers.

The Appleton resident said: “I was thrilled when I opened my wife’s gift. I’d tried it a bit when I was younger, but always fancied learning it properly.

“I studied under the Dutch master hedge-layer Tom van den Burg from Clanfield and then I started travelling the country learning different regional styles of hedge-laying.”

As he became more expert in his “field” he built a business around the craft, repairing and laying hedges for farmers and even the Blenheim estate. He then moved onto competing.

Mr Savins said: “Hedge-laying is usually passed down through generations of families and each region has its style – the South West, Lancashire, Wales and so on.”

Recently he triumphed for the fourth year in a row in the South of England section of the National Hedge Laying Championships.

Mr Savin, who has three grown up daughters, said he was pleased to create habitats for birds and animals that had been lost through land sales and intensive farming.

And it was Mr Savins’ hedge-laying expertise which led to him attracting his royal protégé when he met Princes Charles at a game fair in Bedfordshire in 2001.

A few months later the former landscape farmer was invited to the Prince’s Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire.

Mr Savins said: “Before the Prince turned up for his lesson, his assistant took me to one side and said ‘look, don’t pull any punches with the Prince when you are teaching him. Tell him if he’s going wrong, he wants to learn’.

“He got stuck right in. He loved it and we had lots of laughs. We talked about his love of conservation and really hit it off.

“Last Christmas my wife and I received a personally-signed Christmas card from the Prince and Duchess and a bottle of fine malt whisky.”

Mr Savins now makes regular visits to the estate to work on its hedges. He said: “The Prince learns fast and is a hard worker.

“He has already laid thousands of metres of hedge himself and it is wonderful to know I am passing on a skill to someone who feels so passionately about the countryside.”

He added: “My wife probably didn’t know it then, but that hedge-laying course was the best Christmas present she could have bought me.”