Trinidad and To­ba­go has deep-root­ed ties with the Unit­ed King­dom and the Monar­chy. As a part of the Com­mon­wealth, this coun­try is mourn­ing the death of Prince Philip, the Duke of Ed­in­burgh.

But as the Roy­al Fam­i­ly, the UK and world lead­ers get set to say farewell to the Duke, Guardian Me­dia un­cov­ered a well-kept se­cret about Prince Philip when he vis­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go in 1993 for the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion con­fer­ence.

Dur­ing his so­lo trip to this coun­try, he plant­ed Samaan trees with then First La­dy Za­lay­har Has­sanali.

The two Samaan trees are lo­cat­ed at the Preysal Fly­over in Cou­va, a place where many tra­verse not know­ing that Prince Philip plant­ed the trees that many ad­mire or don’t no­tice at all.

For­mer First La­dy Za­lay­har Has­sanali vis­it­ed the site as she shared the his­to­ry of his vis­it.

“It is a well-kept se­cret that the Duke of Ed­in­burgh plant­ed one of these trees and I plant­ed the oth­er. This ground here was sup­posed to be the site for the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety main build­ing at the time Dhanoo Sookoo and all the oth­ers were there. At the time I was a mem­ber of the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety. We had del­e­gates from all over the world and they came, we had two lots of them be­cause there was over 80 of them,” she said.

The for­mer first la­dy said, “The Duke of Ed­in­burgh was so in­ter­est­ed in Agri­cul­ture and he was in­ter­est­ed in all our flow­ers, our fruit, our food and any­thing. And you know at that time at the Pres­i­dent’s House I did our gar­den where we grew our fruit and veg­eta­bles and in To­ba­go we had our fruit and veg­eta­bles there too and he was so in­ter­est­ed in every­thing, it was a plea­sure be­ing in his com­pa­ny.”

The site is now cov­ered with over­grown bush but the Samaan trees stand out as they over­look the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

“I think the Agri­cul­ture so­ci­ety had a small plaque say­ing it was plant­ed by him... But we need to pre­serve it (the trees), we need to re­al­ly keep it nice and clean and take care of the whole area and all of that be­cause it is the on­ly thing left. We have his sig­na­ture in the guest book, we have the files and all of that but the trees re­al­ly stand out be­cause he plant­ed those,” Mrs Has­sanali said.

The trees were threat­ened some years ago as plans were un­der­way to con­duct road works but the for­mer First La­dy was in­stru­men­tal in shar­ing the sto­ry and pre­serv­ing the trees.

She said, “When they were do­ing road up­grades they want­ed to cut down the trees and I came with my son and told them that they can­not cut down these trees and that the Duke of Ed­in­burgh plant­ed these trees. So luck­i­ly, we were able to save it and it is so beau­ti­ful, very love­ly and it just needs a clean-up”.

Mrs Has­sanali is con­cerned about the lack of in­ter­est in the en­vi­ron­ment and this coun­try’s her­itage as many are un­aware of the rich his­to­ry in this coun­try.

She hopes that a good Samar­i­tan will come along be­fore the Duke’s fu­ner­al on Sat­ur­day and clean the site in Prince Philip’s mem­o­ry.

Prince Philip, who was mar­ried to the Queen for 73 years, died on April 9, just two months shy of his 100th birth­day..