THE NEW YORK TIMES: King Charles, Queen Camilla visit farm, library and 9/11 Memorial during Washington visit

King Charles III of Britain fed chickens in Harlem. His wife, Queen Camilla, visited with Winnie-the-Pooh at the New York Public Library. In the morning, the royal couple laid a bouquet at the September 11 memorial, and by evening, they were hobnobbing with the city’s cultural and artistic elite at Rockefeller Center.

After a day of politics and diplomacy in Washington, the King and queen spent Wednesday taking in different parts of what New York City has to offer.

It was the third day of a four-day visit to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, and the royal couple escaped the politically awkward moments from their trip to the nation’s capital and returned to tightly choreographed photo opportunities, keeping reporters at bay.

In Harlem, the King met with young people at an urban farm run by Harlem Grown, a nonprofit that provides youth development programming. Four schoolchildren greeted him at the chicken coops.

“I like your hair,” one of the children told the King.

“Do you? Good,” Charles replied.

The King was asked if he wanted to feed the chickens.

“Yes, please,” he said enthusiastically, before dropping some greens into the coop.

Besides chicken coops, Harlem Grown’s farm features raised beds, a greenhouse, a tool shed, a composting station, beehives and a covered patio with tables and chairs where the children ate snacks as they waited for the King.

The King has long been an avid environmentalist, advocating on behalf of sustainability and the need to find “harmony” to prevent the worst effects of climate change and ecological destruction. He tends an organic garden at Highgrove House, a family home in southwestern England.

In a speech to Congress a day earlier, the King spoke of “our shared responsibility to safeguard nature, our most precious and irreplaceable asset.” He told lawmakers that “our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems.”

Before leaving the Harlem farm, the King presented its founder with a brown box tied with a red bow, containing honey from bees at Highgrove.

While the King was uptown, the Queen spent the afternoon at the New York Public Library’s main branch in midtown Manhattan, where she promoted her literary charity, the Queen’s Reading Room, and visited a small, carefully preserved stuffed animal that the library’s president and chief executive, Anthony Marx, called “the world’s most famous teddy bear”.

That would be Winnie-the-Pooh, a toy bought from Harrods department store in the 1920s and given by A.A. Milne, author of the “Pooh” books, to his one-year-old son, Christopher Robin.

Along with the other stuffed animals that inspired the books — Kanga, Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger — Pooh resides in pride of place in a climate-controlled case in the library. Kanga’s baby, Roo, was lost by Christopher Robin somewhere in an English apple orchard in the 1930s.

But the Queen on Wednesday came bearing a gift: a bespoke replica of Roo, presented on a Union Jack cushion.

“Hello, children,” Camilla said, greeting a group of schoolchildren seated in front of the “Winnie-the-Pooh” exhibit.

“Hello, Your Majesty,” they replied in unison. The Queen then read from one of the “Pooh” books, along with Jim Cummings, the actor who has been Pooh’s official voice on film since the late 1980s.

In remarks at the library, the Queen spoke of the magic and power of reading and praised the library as a place that “has the power to change its visitors”.

“The first Americans I met in life were the characters I met in my treasured childhood novels,” Camilla said. “I knew even then: The books are best friends you can have, in good times and bad.”

She added that the audience for her book club had grown beyond her “wildest dreams.”

The royal couple had begun their day in New York with a more sombre event: a trip to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan. It was the first time that a British monarch had visited the memorial since it opened in 2014.

Accompanied by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is chairman of the museum, the royal couple laid a bouquet of white lilacs, sweet peas, peonies and white daffodils at the memorial to commemorate the lives lost during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 67 of whom were British.

They set the flowers alongside one of two reflecting pools, etched with the names of victims, that feature waterfalls pouring down into a square chasm.

Standing nearby were firefighters and officers from the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department and the New York Fire Department, in dress uniforms.

The royal couple then greeted families of victims of the attacks and those who responded on that day.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended the event, and he and the King spoke briefly, but they did not have a separate meeting. The mayor had sought to distance himself from Charles before the King’s visit to the city.

When asked before the event what he would tell the King if they spoke, Mamdani, who is a democratic socialist and New York’s first mayor of South Asian heritage, said that he “would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-noor diamond”.

The 105.6-carat diamond was taken from an 11-year-old Indian prince in the 1840s and presented to Queen Victoria. India has long lobbied for its return.

The royal visit to the September 11 memorial was a subtle reminder of one of the last times Britain fought alongside the United States in a war.

When NATO invoked its Article 5 collective defence clause after September 11, 2001, many of its member states, including Britain, sent troops to Afghanistan and, later, Iraq.

Charles made a reference to the attacks during his address to Congress on Tuesday.

“We stood with you then,” he said. “And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten.”

By Wednesday evening, the King had made his way to midtown for a reception at Rockefeller Center.

On the 65th floor, he talked with about 15 of the biggest names in American business as the group was served four kinds of canapés: vegetable spring rolls with balsamic glaze, spring pea empanadas, fish and chips with herbal tartar sauce served in a cone, and beef Wellington bites with béarnaise sauce.

The couple ended their day with a gala at Christie’s Auction House.

The event’s co-chair, Lionel Richie, was present, along with celebrities including Anna Wintour, Iman, Martha Stewart, Donatella Versace, Karlie Kloss, Meghann Fahy and Leo Woodall.