The best moments from the Queen’s Green Planet documentary with Sir David Attenborough

ITV

ITV brought much joy to our screens last night when they aired a relaxed conversation between the Queen and Sir David Attenborough as they strolled through Buckingham Palace’s gardens discussing bees, butterflies and conkers. Filmed on a summer afternoon last year, the programme focused on the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy, a project for forest-conservation initiatives across all 53 countries of the Commonwealth. We’ve picked out our favourite moments from the show:

• When a noisy aircraft flies overhead, the Queen remarks it ‘sounds like President Trump’.
• When the Queen tells David she has planted a tree for each of her children, he goes around and inspects all of the plaques. ‘I don’t think he believes me,’ she says to the camera.
• Upon spotting one of the sadder-looking trees in the grounds, the Queen says: ‘That one we won’t look at, because it doesn’t seem to be doing very well.’ She then turns to someone off camera. ‘Are you sure it’s meant to be like that? Someone sat on it, I think…’

ITV

• When they are discussing the horizontal branches on plane trees, David observes ‘it makes you want to sit on them and swing your feet. If you were a monkey…’
• In the clips of Prince Harry where he is representing the Queen in the Caribbean, he knocks back a shot of a local, plant-based drink he’s been asked to sample. ‘Have I just drunk a tree?’ he asks.
• In archive footage of the Queen and Princess Margaret, there is one scene where they are against a tree together. As the Queen starts to lose her balance, she decides to use Margaret’s head to steady herself.

ITV

• In the footage of Angelina Jolie meeting local San people in the Namibia desert, she explains how the Queen is ‘just this really lovely lady, who really cares about people around the world and the future’.
• When the Queen is greeting the staff at Christmas and talking about the Christmas tree, they discuss the perils of letting the grandchildren too near the baubles, for fear of knocking them off. ‘My great-grandchildren do,’ says the Queen. ‘Even the grandchildren still…’

ITV

The Queen’s Green Planet is available on ITV Hub until 15 May