George Hickton recalls his three meetings with Queen Elizabeth II

George Hickton looks on as Queen Elizabeth II meets All Blacks captain Richie McCaw. Photo / Marc Weakley

Queen Elizabeth II met countless people during her life including George Hickton who was the former head of Tourism New Zealand.

Hickton, who now lives in Raumati South, met the Queen on three occasions.

The first was at the world-famous Chelsea Flower Show, in London, in 2004.

"New Zealand had entered a promotional garden in the show called The Garden of Ora.

"It was based on indigenous Māori themes and we won gold.

"The Queen came by and had a chat to me about the garden.

"She was really interested to know if we had brought the plants with us from New Zealand, and was quite amazed the plants had been sourced from UK garden centres.

"She took a real interest in the garden, and we chatted for a while, until she was dutifully whisked away."

Shortly after the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, came along and said to Hickton 'you haven't brought any of those flatworms with you have you?'

"Flatworms came from New Zealand and were a bit of a scourge in English gardens.

"I had heard about flatworms actually, and told him no, and we'd got all the plants from England."

Hickton said the royal couple was "very interested that New Zealand had put in a garden and also that it had won an award".

New Zealand entered another garden two years later so Hickton met her again.

And he met her again when New Zealand put up a giant inflatable rugby ball in Paris, in 2008, to promote the Rugby World Cup which would be held in New Zealand in 2011.

"We took that to London and the Queen visited that as well, with the Duke, and met all the All Blacks.

"Those sorts of events she was very keen to come to because they were part of the Commonwealth and saw us being part of the English tradition.

"And then I had to escort the Duke around all of the All Blacks for 45 minutes and chatted to him about the time they did the coronation tour of New Zealand which I recalled."

Hickton said he was very privileged to have met the Queen more than once.
He found her to be well informed and "amazingly good at putting people at ease".