Meet the Duchess of Northumberland. If you're unfamiliar with Jane Percy, she's developed quite a reputation for being a bit unconventional as far as British royalty goes. She's broken barriers on many fronts and says her next endeavor is going to wow folks in her region of England.
In October, the gardens at her castle, Alnwick Castle, will host a� mixed martial arts event. The 100,000-acre Alnwick Gardens will be the home for a televised fight card featuring the Northern Free Fighters and Team Shotai Kai.
The castle also happens to be the one that served as the backdrop for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft And Wizardry in the Harry Potter movies.
"I'd have failed here if this was just a garden for garden-lovers," Duchess Jane Percy told the Telegraph. "My job is to provide a venue for people who want to do all kinds of things. And this is for 16- to 30-year-old men who wouldn't normally come to a garden."
The Duchess realizes the edgy sport will irk some, but she wants to provide cultural options for entire area.
"You've got a community on your doorstep who don't have enough to do on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night. They're crying out for things like this," the Duchess said. "I want to blow people away, to take them out of their everyday life, to come in here and think, '[Expletive], that's unbelievable.'"
But she's not just hosting the event for those young men in the community, the Duchess is a fight enthusiast herself. She's trained in boxing and other martial arts.
"[...] Boxing. A bit of kick-boxing. All sorts of martial arts but within a cage," the Duchess said. "You're not just given a knuckle-duster and told to kill your opponent. There's an art to it. It's incredibly disciplined. And that discipline is the same thing you get in the Army."
The Duchess has already been in the news often with her re-design of Alnwick Gardens. She's spent �35 million specifically on a 12-acre walled portion:
[...] the garden today is less English stately home, more Disney bling, including myriad water and lighting effects, the largest treehouse in the world, a glass pavilion for wedding hire, and a Poison Garden, which, with the permission of the Home Office, contains cannabis, opium poppies and catha edulis, know to clubbers as miaow miaow.
Alnwick Garden is a charitable trust that attracts over 800,000 visitors and generates roughly �50 million for the region each year.
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