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Judi Dench Reveals Memorial Grove for Late Friends at Surrey Home

Her RHS 'Roots' interview highlights how her garden serves as a living memorial.

Overview

  • In a filmed chat for the Royal Horticultural Society’s Roots series with BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley, Judi Dench said she plants a tree for each friend who dies.
  • Footage showed individual trees marked with slates bearing names such as Maggie Smith, Donald Sinden, Bernard Culshaw, and John Stride.
  • Dench said she was given one of the Sycamore Gap trees and that she has been offered an oak from Sherwood Forest.
  • She noted a favorite tree for her late husband, Michael Williams, and said the house comforts her because reminders of his work remain.
  • The four-decade Outwood farmhouse is a wildlife haven with a pond, water voles, ducks, deer, and rabbits, and she has previously described post-lockdown upkeep problems like mice.