Since 2011, the former carriage house of the Walburg Castle functions as headquarters for Bird Protection Flanders (Vogelbescherming Vlaanderen), a non-profit organisation that campaigns for the protection of birds.
The carriage house itself dates back to the mid 19th century, when mayor Jozef Van Naemen, son of a rich manufacturer in the textile industry, took up his residence in the Walburg Castle. He modified the castle and had a caretaker's lodge and a carriage house built.
Today, the carriage house offers a natural habitat for Bird Protection. To improve visitor's safety (falling trees often turned walking here into a hazardous activity), the monotonous old beech trees that surrounded the building, were replaced with a diverse deciduous forest. As a result, the carriage house is now surrounded by 70 different indigenous tree species. Twenty of those species are very rare.
In 2011, three of the old beech stems at the border of the park were transformed into totems, symbolizing Sint-Niklaas as a UNICEF city of solidarity.
