Pensioners in 'dig for victory'

The gold medal winning garden will take six months to recreate

Work has begun on a project which will see an award-winning Chelsea Flower Show garden recreated at a pub in Kent.

The Chelsea Pensioner's garden, with roses and wild flowers, featured a "Dig for Victory" vegetable garden, and was called "A Soldier's Dream of Blighty".

It is being installed at the New Flying Horse Inn, in Wye, near Ashford, and is due to be completed in May 2006.

Two Chelsea pensioners from the Royal Hospital helped to turn the soil when work got under way earlier this month.

Gold medal

The original garden incorporated welcome home bunting, a field of poppies, a pond and a traditional English pub.

It also featured authentic vegetables from a 1939 catalogue which had been specially grown by the pensioners.

The gold medal winning garden, designed by Julian Dowle, was supported by the Kent brewer, Shepherd Neame.

Installing the garden at the pub will involve splitting up the elements of the original design to incorporate into areas in the existing garden, which covers more than an acre.

Bobby Neame, former chairman of Shepherd Neame, said he hoped visitors to the pub would take inspiration from the garden.