![\"Princess](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/2.80870743.jpg\")
The Princess of Wales planting a rose during a visit to the RHS\u2019s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex (Stefan Rousseau\/PA)<\/p>\nKate, wearing a brown blazer and brown trousers, said the recovery journey from cancer is a \u201crollercoaster\u201d as she discussed treatment and the importance of holistic cancer care with patients, volunteers and staff at Colchester Hospital\u2019s Wellbeing Centre on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The princess, who revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer in March last year, praised the centre\u2019s \u201cholistic\u201d approach to the support it offers patients, relatives and carers which includes counselling and dietary advice.<\/p>\n
The Princess of Wales planting a rose during a visit to the RHS\u2019s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex (Stefan Rousseau\/PA)<\/p>\n
While chatting to a group of the centre\u2019s users, volunteers and staff, the princess said: \u201cIt\u2019s life changing for anyone, through first diagnosis or post-treatment and things like that, it is life changing experience both for the individual patient but also for the families as well and actually it sometimes goes unrecognised, you don\u2019t necessarily, particularly when it\u2019s the first time, you don\u2019t appreciate how much impact it is going to have.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to find your new normal and that takes time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone described the sort of healing, recovery journey to me as being like a sort of zig-zag.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a rollercoaster, it\u2019s not one smooth plain, which you expect it to be, but the reality is it\u2019s not, you go through hard times and to have a place like this, to have the support network, whether its through creativity and singing or gardening, whatever it might be, is so valuable and it\u2019s great that this community has it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be great if lots of communities had this kind of support.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cThere is this whole phase when you finish your treatment that you, yourself, everybody expects you, right you\u2019ve finished your time, go, you\u2019re better, and that\u2019s not the case at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Princess](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/2.80870590.jpg\")
The Princess of Wales during a visit to the RHS\u2019s Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital in Essex (Stefan Rousseau\/PA)<\/p>\n
After visiting the centre, the princess braved the drizzly weather to plant several coral-pink Catherine\u2019s Rose plants in the hospital\u2019s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Wellbeing Garden.<\/p>\n
The RHS named the flower after Kate to raise awareness of the role that spending time outdoors plays in supporting people\u2019s mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.<\/p>\n
Foregoing gardening gloves which were offered to her, she knelt down to plant the roses using her bare hands and a trowel to pat down the soil alongside Adam Frost, the award-winning garden designer who led the design of the space.<\/p>\n
Opened in July last year, the wellbeing garden at the hospital offers a relaxing and restorative space for NHS staff, patients and visitors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kate, wearing a brown blazer and brown trousers, said the recovery journey from cancer is a \u201crollercoaster\u201d as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,7714,7713,533,2832,532,2831,7710,519,7711,7712],"class_list":{"0":"post-232046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-british-royal-family","9":"tag-catherine","10":"tag-catherine-middleton","11":"tag-kate-middleton","12":"tag-prince-of-wales","13":"tag-prince-william","14":"tag-princess-of-wales","15":"tag-royal-families","16":"tag-royal-family","17":"tag-uk-royal-family","18":"tag-william"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114783777334493992","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}