A DAY OUT AT LEEUWERGEM CASTLE.

My wife is rather fond of gardening and me myself and I are rather fond of castles, so when we got the news there was a gardening fair on the grounds of Leeuwergem Castle (Kasteel van Leeuwergem), in the province of East Flanders, we off to the event.


It's a rather small chateau, not far from the town of Zottegem, and it was built between 1762 and 1764 by Ghent nobility, more precisely Pieter Emmanuel d'Hane (1726-1786). What is now Belgium was then a part of the so-called Austrian Netherlands, and run from Vienna. Before that, we were the Spanish Netherlands, but we came to the Austrian Emperor at the end of the Spanish Succession War in 1713. This Austrian rule would last until 1795, when French revolutionary armies invaded the Low Countries.

In any case, when the chateau was built, it was done so in Louis XV style, or rococo if you want. That late Baroque movement in the arts and architecture, characterised by less stringent adherence to classical lines and decidedly more ornate, florid and frivolous, originated at the French court. A common recurrence is the shell motif, and indeed it can be found both on the inside and the outside of this little palace.

On the first floor there's a small charming chapel, dedicated to the four evangelists. It hasn't changed in appearance since it was inaugurated in 1764.








Initially the garden was designed as a rococo garden too, but not for long. Already in 1785 work was begun on a typical English landscape garden. Of course - I have visited English landscape gardens - the original ones are far, far bigger. Leeuwergem's is cosy and its major lanes can be walked in less than an hour.





Unique is the so-called "Looftheater", a "natural theatre" so to say, formed entirely by clever planting of hedge beech (carpinus betulus). It's formed by an oval archway (completely sheltering people passing through it with its leaves) encompassing a "natural" stage on a slightly lower level, with smartly cut beech outcroppings forming the suites protruding from the archway. On the pic below is the small rectangular inside field serving as the "stage"...





... while this photo provides a good view of some of the "suites". All in all, the whole "Looftheater" isn't that big. Still the chateau's website claims 800 spectators can attend an event.






MFBB.