Duke of Edinburgh backs plans to restore Battle of Waterloo gardens
The Duke of Edinburgh is backing a £1.3 million campaign to restore the gardens at Hougoumont in Belgium, the chateau farm defended by the Coldstream and Scots Guards against overwhelming odds during the Battle of Waterloo.
Prince Edward was due to visit the site on Friday, two days after the 210th anniversary of the battle, at which the Duke of Wellington's allied forces vanquished Napoleon's Grande Armée on June 18 1815.
The Duke will arrive at the farm via the north gate, where Britain's Foot Guards repelled a French incursion led by an axe-wielding lieutenant.
Wellington later declared: 'The success of the battle turned upon the closing of the gates at Hougoumont.'
The farm and gardens were devastated during the battle, which left 50,000 dead and wounded.
While some of the buildings at Hougoumont, a strategically vital defensive bastion on the right of Wellington's line, were restored for the bicentenary of the battle, the remains of the chateau were kept as a ruin and the gardens were never replanted.
Now, the Friends of the Hougoumont Gardens group is leading a fundraising campaign to restore them to the way they would have looked in 1815.
'We're extremely pleased that the Duke of Edinburgh is coming here to back the new initiative and hope his presence will act as a multiplier for support,' Baron Alexander de Vos van Steenwijk, the group's Brussels-based Dutch chairman, told The Telegraph.
The Duke, who is Colonel of the Scots Guards, will lay a wreath at the Closing the Gates memorial.
The memorial was unveiled in 2015 by King Charles when he was the Prince of Wales, in the presence of Charles Wellesley, the 9th Duke of Wellington and Prince of Waterloo, together with Prince Charles Bonaparte, a descendant of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon's younger brother.
The Friends of the Hougoumont Gardens (Les Amis des Jardins d'Hougoumont) is administered by the Fondation Roi Baudouin, a royal charity in Belgium.
The replanting scheme, overseen by François Goffinet, a renowned garden architect, has already received €1.1 million (£950,000) towards its €1.5 million target.
This came mostly from the local Walloon regional government and guarantees that restoration work can begin next year.
The project has four elements – reconstructing the French-style formal garden with its symmetrical patterns, restoring the kitchen vegetable garden on the west side of the farm, replanting the large orchard, which was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting, and creating a new, fourth garden on wetland beyond the north gate.
'We know how the gardens looked before the battle because there were many depictions of Hougoumont from the time. We've also worked with archaeologists who have carried out research which shows how and where the trees were planted in the
orchard,' said Baron de Vo.
'The new garden, which we're calling a 'biosphere', will show off the wonders of the natural world.
'The idea is to experiment with new species of plants, to encourage insect life and create an educational space for schools and families to visit.
'A 'tree of peace', grown from the seeds of a sapling rescued after the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, will also be planted during the Duke of Edinburgh's visit.'
Michael Mitchell, a retired British consultant who served in the Grenadier Guards and lives near the battlefield, is among those closely involved with the planned garden restoration, due to be completed in 2027.
'We have secured around 80 per cent of the funding required and aim to raise the rest through individual donations. It's a very sustainable project,' he said.
Kléber Rossillon, a French heritage company that manages the battlefield site, including the Waterloo Memorial museum, has pledged to provide four gardeners to ensure the upkeep of the gardens.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Rolling pins for hammers and grouting with a credit card: How under-40s who don't have a toolbox tackle DIY jobs in their homes
If you want something done right, do it yourself, as the saying goes. But when it comes to maintenance around the home a significant number of us are botching DIY jobs by using the wrong tools – including swapping hammers for rolling pins. A survey found four in ten people under the age of 40 do not own a toolbox, while three quarters (74 per cent) admit that they regularly attempt projects without the proper equipment – often costing them thousands of pounds in the process. A further 65 per cent have used an object from around the home to try to get the job done. Some 72 per cent of respondents have had at least five DIY disasters in the last year, with the average cost per disaster coming in at £1,555 – totalling a whopping £7,775 a year. And half (51 per cent) admitted to having to call out a professional tradesman to fix the problem as a result of their DIY bungles. The research found 71 per cent have used a kitchen knife as a screwdriver, while 63 per cent frequently use scissors to trim plants and hedges. Credit cards to spread grout (40 per cent), kitchen bowls to mix wallpaper paste (37 per cent) and Sellotape to fix leaking pipes (36 per cent) also emerged among the most commonly used wrong tools for jobs. Other appropriated household items include broomsticks to clear gutters (33 per cent), Tupperware dishes to mix filler (32 per cent), rolling pins as hammers (31 per cent) and spoons to dig out weeds (31 per cent). And two thirds (66 per cent) have even tried to guess if a shelf or picture is level using just their eye, rather than a proper spirit level, with 72 per cent adamant that it was straight despite missing the right tools. One in four (23 per cent) say they are 'rubbish' and 'terrible' at DIY, with 13 per cent admitting they end up watching internet tutorials when they want to learn how to do something. It is no surprise that as a result, three quarters (74 per cent) were put off from DIY altogether. Rebecca Leversidge from insurance company Premierline, which commissioned the research, said: 'While innovation and initiative in the home is admirable, DIY is often a risky substitute for calling in a professional who will have the right skills and tools for the job – especially when it comes at an average cost of £1,555 per fix.' According to the 500 tradesmen interviewed as part of the survey, 43 per cent have noticed a decline in DIY skills in recent years and 30 per cent felt there has been a significant drop. One in ten say they are being called out at least once a week to fix botched jobs, with poorly fitted shelves and cabinets (40 per cent), electrical wiring issues (37 per cent), burst pipes (35 per cent), damaged walls (31 per cent) and poor paintwork and wallpapering (26 per cent) being the main problems. But that does not stop us, despite 10 per cent worrying about doing a bad job and 7 per cent panicking about damaging their property. The professionals have come up with a list of must-haves for the home toolbox, including a tape measure, spirit level and power drill.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
How your hairdresser could convince you to go green: Experts call for roll out of 'eco-stylists' to encourage Brits into sustainable lifestyles
Once a trip to the hairdresser's involved nothing more challenging than a chat about your latest holiday. Now it seems a quick cut and blow dry could come with a conversation about your carbon footprint. Experts are calling for state-sponsored eco-stylists to nudge clients towards sustainable lifestyles. It comes after a pilot scheme found that what we chat about in the salon changes our everyday lives. A report revealed chatty stylists are the perfect influencers to subtly bring about behaviour change. Hairdressers have previously been trained to spot signs of domestic abuse. In the pilot scheme – called Mirror Talkers – stickers carrying green tips were stuck to salon mirrors to spark conversations, and 73 per cent of people subsequently pledged to make planet-friendly changes to their haircare habits. Now ministers are being urged to back schemes that could see subliminal lectures in unlikely places – including cafes, restaurants and farmers' markets. The latest study – led by Oxford University and the Government-funded Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations – wants to tackle 'pluralistic ignorance relating to climate action'. It claims hairdressers have 'considerable untapped potential regarding the influence [they] could have on clients'. 'While researchers can equip people with the tools and knowledge to become better at public engagement, in fact, hairdressers are already experts,' it says. The authors, convened by Oxford's Dr Sam Hampton, envisage salon chats 'beginning with haircare as a point of connection, but expanding to broader conversations about energy, transport, food, investments, carbon literacy and intergenerational responsibility'. Calling for funding, they concluded: 'Yielding the power of everyday influencers to build public consensus is an under-utilised strategy which demands new approaches to climate policy.' The latest study also involved the Universities of Southampton and Utrecht in the Netherlands.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Killer sudoku 975
Click here to access the print version. Normal sudoku rules apply, except the numbers in the cells contained within dotted lines add up to the figures in the corner. No number can be repeated within each shape formed by dotted lines. To see the completed puzzle, buy the next issue of the Guardian (for puzzles published Monday to Thursday). Solutions to Friday and Saturday puzzles are given in either Saturday's or Monday's edition.
