The D-Day 75 Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show

I can’t believe it’s 5 years since we took the Normandy veterans to RHS Chelsea! By “we” I mean the charity I co-founded with my father in 2009. For those who haven’t heard me talk about this before, the charity is called D-Day Revisited and it was established to offer financial and practical assistance to WWII veterans - specifically those involved in the Normandy Campaign - to return to the battlefields where they fought and pay tribute to those they left behind.

After 11 years we had decided that the 75th anniversary year in 2019 would be our final visit to France. It had been a difficult decision to make, but our veteran friends were all well into their nineties and we felt the time was right. That said we wanted to go out on a high and really celebrate the men and women who had so enriched our lives by generously sharing their experience and wisdom with us over the past decade. So we pushed ourselves to complete a few extracurricular projects to mark this significant anniversary and shine as much light as possible on the D-Day veterans! The D-Day 75 Garden was one such project.

The idea came to mind as we were travelling up the M6 by coach on our way back from Normandy in 2018. It had been another incredible week with our veteran friends and mindful of the big anniversary the following year, I was just tumbling ideas of what we could do to celebrate the veterans and spread awareness of their story. As you may have noticed, I love a garden! I’d been along to the Chelsea Flower Show a couple of times and given that it takes place in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, it occurred to me the show would make a fitting platform for an installation centred around Normandy veterans.

After contacting the RHS with literally no clue what I was doing, they put me in touch with the incredibly talented RHS Gold medal winning garden designer and sculptor, John Everiss. John then brought in fundraiser and all round legend, Peter Deaman of Lateral Consultancy, and the three of us set to work to raise a whopping £450,000 in 11 months! It was a colossal challenge, but we each shared this vision of what the D-Day 75 Garden could be and this spurred us on every day. I learned so much in that time and I am forever grateful to John and Peter for taking me under their wing and helping to make this dream a reality.

Our objective was to create a legacy that would continue to tell the story of D-Day to future generations and we did it! The garden was exhibited at the Royal Hospital Chelsea during the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where it celebrated Normandy veterans; 75 of whom were invited to take part across the week and share their incredible stories with the Chelsea Pensioners and the public. Thanks must go to the QARANC volunteers who helped us to support the veterans during their time in London.

John’s garden design was beautiful. He manifested a moment in which the 75 years which separated an elderly man from his younger self was bridged and onlookers were invited to consider how it must feel for veterans to reflect back on the intense experiences they endured on D-Day and the days that followed.

The garden encouraged visitors to pause, reflect and learn. It was designed to provoke curiosity and get people talking about what happened 75 years earlier on that pivotal day which changed the course of history. It certainly did this. Throughout the week it was wonderful to hear visitors of all ages telling us how the garden had sparked conversations about the role their own relatives had played during the Second World War.

Two life-size sculptures bookmarked the entrance to the installation and so narrated the scene which was unfolding behind them.  To one side a veteran modelled on Bill Pendell MM sat on a stone plinth wearing his medals and beret.  Hand carved from a single block of Millstone Grit, he looks across at an ethereal image of himself as a 22 year old, constructed from thousands of individually welded metal washers. This young figure of soldier Bill was paused before rushing up the beachhead, with fellow comrades struggling to get ashore behind him. With the iconic home of the Chelsea Pensioners in the background, it was very poignant scene.

Beyond veteran Bill, a further 15 stone plinths stretch out towards the Royal Hospital Chelsea.  Each day we helped 15 Normandy veterans from all over the country travel down to London to see the garden and meet with RHS Chelsea Flower Show visitors.

Being a photographer I obviously had to schedule a daily kodak moment! We invited veterans to take a seat on the stone plinths and look across at the scene depicting young soldiers landing on the beaches of occupied France 75 years earlier. Here they were surrounded by a carpet of 10,000 Armeria maritima plants (’sea thrift’), which would have been seen by the troops as they embarked along the south coast of England and again as they pushed inland off the Normandy beaches.

To be able to celebrate our veteran friends in this way was such an honour for everyone involved. During the show the garden was visited by Royalty, celebrities and even Monty Don! The media was hugely supportive as they geared up for their coverage of the forthcoming anniversary in France and the D-Day 75 Garden was featured on international television, in newspapers and online, spreading the story far and wide.

After the show, the D-Day 75 Garden was dismantled and gifted by allied veterans to the town of Arromanches, Normandy in a ceremony on 6th June 2019. There it stands as a lasting tribute to Bill Pendell and his pals. 

Our friend Bill had an enormous sense of fun and was incredibly humble. He had no idea why we would choose to model the central statue in the garden on him. But to us he was an ideal representative of the Normandy veterans... an ordinary young man called to war and thrown into an intense and often traumatic new world. Despite the hardship and any loss he suffered, Bill rose to the challenge and did extraordinary things for his comrades and for the cause of freedom. Like so many of his contemporaries at that time, he demonstrated the very best characteristics of humankind; courage, determination, intelligence, humour and humility.

Sadly Bill passed away before the garden was completed, so he never saw the impact it had that year. His statue will remain on the clifftops above Gold Beach in Normandy in perpetuity, inspiring future generations with the story of the legendary D-Day veterans.

Delivering this project and seeing the veterans being celebrated centre stage at the world’s most prestigious horticultural show was honestly one of the happiest and proudest moments of my life. Naturally we have lost more veteran friends since then, but I’m pleased there are still a few who at around 100 years of age plan to make their pilgrimage to Normandy for the 80th anniversary next month. They are an endless inspiration!

One day I’ll take my daughters to Normandy to visit the D-Day 75 Garden and tell them the story of Bill and his friends.