Flowers laid to honour the Queen’s memory in Green Park are being moved as the official national mourning period ends today.
Royal Parks staff and volunteers began removing the floral tributes from the central London park on Monday, before transporting them to Hyde Park nursery.
They will then be composted in Kensington Gardens for use on landscaping projects and shrubberies across the Royal Parks.
Work began to remove items laid by the public one week after the nation bid a final farewell to the Queen at her state funeral last Monday.
Tens of thousands of mourners travelled to London to pay their respects after Buckingham Palace announced the Queen had died aged 96 on Thursday, 8 September at Balmoral.
Staff were seen loading up a horse-drawn cart with armfuls of flowers, while volunteers wearing hi-viz vests carefully placed blooms in buckets to be taken away.
Soft toys and other items will be stored until a decision is made about what to do with them at a later date.
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The Royal Parks, which include Green Park, Hyde Park, St James’ Park, Regents Park and Kensington Gardens, have been flooded with floral tributes and other tokens to honour the Queen, who spent a historic 70 years on the throne.
A Royal Parks spokesperson said: “Our priority at the moment is to manage the huge volume of flowers and tributes that are being left in the Green Park Floral Tribute Garden.
“We will store any teddies and artefacts that have been left and will work closely with our partners to agree what we do with them over the next few months with discretion and sensitivity.”
In a message of thanks to the nation, King Charles offered his gratitude to “all those countless people” who offered “support and comfort” in the wake of his beloved mother’s death.
The King and Queen Consort said they were “moved beyond measure” by everyone who took the trouble to pay their respects to the Queen at Royal residences up and down the nation.
