You Can Now Wander Queen Elizabeth's Private Windsor Castle Gardens
Ever wanted to wander Queen Elizabeth's private gardens? Well, you're now in luck. On Saturday August 8, Windsor Castle's formal East Terrace Gardens will open to us commoners for the first time in decades.
The East Terrace Gardens are stunning part of Windsor Castle, one of the Queen's official residences and where she's spent the last few months during the coronavirus lockdown. Now that the Queen and Prince Philip moved to Balmoral Castle, the royal family's Scottish summer estate, the Queen opened up her gardens to visitors during August and September weekends.
These large, formal gardens have a stunning view of Windsor Castle's east façade. There you'll also find 3,500 rose bushes planted in a geometric pattern around a fountain, along with clipped domes of yew lining the perimeter.
Not only is the garden visually captivating, it also has a rich history. The East Terrace Garden was commissioned by King George IV and constructed between 1824 and 1826. The original purpose of the new addition was to improve the view from the royal apartments along the castle's east side and replace a bowling green made for Charles II in the 1670s.
The new garden was adorned for a King, indeed, with 34 orange trees, sent to George IV by French King Charles X. Statues were also 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, which remain in the garden today.
Over the years, the garden has been sporadically opened to the public. While it was mostly private during its early years, King William IV allowed access during his reign, and this precedent continued through most of the 19th century. In the early 20th century, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra even held large garden parties there.
While it has been kept private for most of the her time as monarch, Queen Elizabeth has her own personal attachment to the East Terrace Garden. During World War II, when she was known as Princess Elizabeth, the Queen and Princess Margaret turned a portion of the space into a vegetable garden. They each cultivated a small plot of land and grew tomatoes, sweetcorn, and dwarf beans.
In 1971, Prince Philip spearheaded the garden's redesign. He rearranged many of the flowerbeds and commissioned and personally designed new bronze lotus fountain for the garden's center. Since then, the East Terrace Garden has served as a backdrop for several official portraits of the Queen, including a 1997 photograph by Patrick Lichfield and a 2016 portrait by Annie Leibovitz.
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If you want to visit this historic royal site, you better hurry. The grounds will close back up again at the end of September. You can buy tickets to wander the garden and enjoy the view from its terraces for any weekend in August and September. In addition, visitors with young children will be given special access to Windsor Castle's Moat Garden on August Thursdays and Fridays, where there will be guided walks and family art activities. There, you can have a picnic on the lawn or climb up the Castle motte of this notable spot, rumored to have been the setting for Geoffrey Chaucer's The Knight’s Tale, the first story from his The Canterbury Tales.
For more information, head to the Royal Collection Trust's website.
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