While the Rolls-Royce Global Centre of Luxury Manufacturing Excellence stood largely silent between 24 March 2020 and 4 May 2020, it was very much business as usual for the plants, animals, birds and insects that inhabit the 17-hectre site.
Like many of the human inhabitants of the Home of Rolls-Royce, the celebrated lime trees that grace the Courtyard entered the month of June in urgent need of a haircut as all 65 trees were meticulously trimmed, using laser-guided precision cutting equipment to restore them to immaculate, uniform perfection in honour of the return of Rolls-Royce clients.
Production at the Goodwood Apiary also continued uninterrupted throughout the pandemic. The 250,000-strong colony of English honey bees, whose activities now attract a worldwide following on social media, is working round-the-clock preparing this season's consignment of their rare and precious product, the 'Rolls-Royce of Honey'.
As well as the multitude of wildflowers growing across the site, and those on the surrounding Goodwood Estate, the bees have access to over eight acres of sedum on the manufacturing plant's living roof, the largest of its kind in Britain.
Fittingly, the flowers pollinated by the Goodwood bees in the course of their labours include one that grows nowhere else in the world. Produced exclusively for Rolls-Royce by the award-winning British rose breeder Philip Harkness, the Phantom Rose flourishes in a lavender-fringed flowerbed near the reflection ponds beside the manufacturing plant. A blousy, creamy-white flower with a full bloom of 50 petals and a rich perfume, the Rose recently inspired an intricately embroidered Bespoke interior, featuring over a million individual stiches, handcrafted for a Swedish client's Phantom.
