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Railway Chateau Cemetery – now returned to lawn
I was pleased to receive some photos of Railway Chateau Cemetery near Ypres from my brother, Mark Banning of MGB Tours. This was one of the cemeteries that the CWGC chose to conduct their climate charge trial on. Sadly this meant that for a period of eighteen months the cemetery lost its turf which was replaced with a most unsatisfactotry form of hard standing. It was telling how the difference in ground surface had such an effect on the architects vision of the cemetery – no longer a peaceful English garden but a messy patch of neglected ground. Even the plants seemed to suffer.
I wrote back in February that the cemetery was to be returned to tuft and can now post some images from last week.
Railway Chateau Cemetery in April 2011 with a welcome return of the turf
Thank goodness this experiment has ended. Whilst I completely understand the need for the CWGC to be at the vanguard of horticulture with regard to climate change, it was pretty clear at the outset that this experiment was not well regarded. The work seemed to have been done in such a slapdash way – quite unlike the usual CGWC gardening and landscaping.
Some other images below including how the cemetery looked during its experiment.
That looks much better now, very glad the CWGC have returned it to turf.
I too am pleased that this cemetery has been returned to how it should look. It looked like a poorly-maintained car park when I visited. To my mind it was never anything about global warming, more a try-on by the CWGC to see if they could get away with a low-maintenance version of a cemetery; if it had worked then I think that we would have seen more of the same elsewhere. Let’s hope the CWGC have learned their lesson.