Readers called up to help fund D-Day garden
AG readers have been asked to help fund a garden at next year’s RHS Chelsea show that will commemorate the
75th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The Normandy Veterans’ charity D-Day Revisited has launched a crowdfunding page to help finance the garden during the annual floral festival in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London.
The garden will be based around 97-year-old Bill Pendell from Oxfordshire, who was a 22-year-old despatch rider in the Royal Signals, 11th Armoured Division. He was awarded the Military Medal in June
1945 for bravery in combat and in 2016 received the Légion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit.
The garden, designed by John Everiss, will feature two life-size sculptures of Bill. The first shows him wearing his medals and beret as he looks across at the second sculpture, a fragile metal figure of himself as a
22-year-old, pausing for a moment before taking part in the Normandy landings.
Victoria Phipps of D-Day Revisited, said: “The D-Day
75 Garden aims to celebrate our living veterans, as well as remembering those they left behind in Normandy.”
The D-Day 75 Garden is supported by the families of Field Marshal Montgomery and General Eisenhower. You can contribute via
gofundme.com/dday-75garden.
For further details visit
d-dayrevisited.co.uk or call ✆ 01244 531765.