Windsor Castle garden reopens after 40 years

Terrace designed by the Duke of Edinburgh to welcome visitors for the first time in 40 years

A formal Windsor Castle garden designed by the Duke of Edinburgh and often chosen as a backdrop for official portraits has been deemed safe to open to the public for the first time in 40 years, owing to new limits on visitor numbers. The East Terrace Garden, originally created by George IV in the 1820s, which features 3,500 rose bushes, will open this weekend, allowing people to stroll along the terrace and into grounds long favoured by generations of royals.

A FORMAL Windsor Castle garden designed by the Duke of Edinburgh has been deemed safe to open to the public for the first time in 40 years due to new limits on visitor numbers.

The East Terrace Garden, originally created by George IV in the 1820s, will open this weekend, allowing people to stroll along the terrace and into grounds long favoured by generations of royals and often chosen as a backdrop for official portraits.

The large garden, featuring 3,500 rose bushes planted around a central fountain, has remained the preserve of the Royal family for decades because the sheer volume of visitors to the castle rendered it at risk of damage from excess footfall.

But as stately homes reopen with limited tickets and reduced capacity allowing for social distancing, the Royal Collection Trust, which manages the public opening of the Queen’s official residences, thought it a welcome addition to the tour.

“We appreciate that our visitors want to spend as much time outside as possible,” a spokesman for the trust said. “We want to give them more outside space in the current climate.”

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have spent the last few months in lockdown at Windsor Castle and no doubt enjoyed the vast array of roses in bloom before travelling to Balmoral in Aberdeenshire this week for their annual summer break.

The Duke redesigned the flower beds and commissioned a bronze lotus fountain, based on his own design, for the centre of the garden in 1971. It features clipped domes of yew and beds of rose bushes planted in a geometric pattern around the fountain. The garden was first designed for George IV by architect Sir Jeffry Wyatville, between 1824 and 1826, to provide a pleasant view from the King’s new suite of royal apartments. Plants were imported for the scheme, including 34 orange trees, sent to George IV by the French King, Charles X.

Statues were brought from the Privy Gardens at Hampton Court, including a set of four bronze figures by Hubert Le Sueur, made for Charles I in the 1630s and which remain in the garden today.

In the 19th century, the gardens were remodelled by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who took particular interest in the planting scheme.

Queen Victoria recorded in her diary: “Albert is daily occupied … in superintending the planting of the garden in the inside of the Terrace.

“The plots were before so scrubby & scraggy, but are now being very nicely arranged with laurustinus.”

The garden has been open to the public intermittently over the centuries, dependent on the reigning monarch. George IV sought total privacy in the garden but public access was granted by his brother, William IV, and continued throughout the 19th century.

In the early 20th century, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra held large garden parties there each summer for hundreds of guests. During the Second World War, some of the flower beds were repurposed as allotments to grow vegetables.

The Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, and her sister, Princess Margaret, were each assigned a small plot where they cultivated tomatoes, sweetcorn and dwarf beans.

After the war, the planting scheme was simplified into the pattern of formal rose beds.

It was last closed to the public in the early Seventies.

Access to the garden will be included with admission to Windsor Castle on weekends in August and September, starting tomorrow.