Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden

The creation of the Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden, in the heart of Lower Manhattan, was prompted by a desire to honor and memorialize the 67 British subjects who lost their lives in the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001. In 2002, the St. George’s Society, under the then presidency of William R. Miller, CBE, embraced the idea of creating a permanent garden memorial.

The Garden is administered by the British Memorial Garden Trust.

The Garden was developed from a plan by English landscape designers Julian and Isabel Bannerman. It combines this park’s footprint with the shape of the British Isles, enclosed by a ribbon of Morayshire sandstone quarried from the highlands of Scotland.

Serving as a living geography lesson, this ribbon of stone is inscribed from north to south with the shires of the British Isles, from Aberdeen to Portland. A large, rounded “Braemar” stone, smoothed over the years by the passage of the Dee River near HM Queen Elizabeth’s Balmoral estate in Aberdeenshire, sits at the south end of the Garden. In the spirit of a cairn, it marks the distance from New York City to Aberdeen.

Here in the Garden , the rich tradition of English gardens meets the urban American landscape. Lynden B. Miller and Ronda M. Brands, of the New York firm Lynden B. Miller Public Garden Design, worked with the Bannermans design to create a park that would endure through all seasons, with plants that capture the spirit of an English garden.

The four evergreen hollies (Ilex x aquipernyi ‘Dragon Lady’), cultivars derived from an English holly parent,stand as entry pillars at the north and south ends of the Garden. They are linked to the vertical spires of Sky Pencil hollies (Ilex crenata ‘Sky Pencil’) by a winding row of 67 nandinas (Nandina domestica ‘Gulf Stream’), evergreen shrubs with foliage that turns red and orange in the colder months, each signifying one of the 67 British victims of the September 11 attacks.

Along the backs of the serpentine benches - made of white Portland stone quarried in southern England and carved in Northern Ireland - are rounded yew shrubs (Taxus x media ‘Brownii’), long-lived evergreens and an iconic feature of English churchyards, representing the natural link between the living and the dead. These plants are the backbone of the Garden, and suggest the narrative behind its creation.

Nestled within is a range of herbaceous and woody flowering plants that recall the plant palette of an English garden, ranging from the tiny blue flower of the Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) and the pink blossom of pigsqueak (Bergenia cordifolia ‘Bressingham Ruby’) to a host of hydrangeas, spireas, rhododendrons and azaleas. The flowering lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis), a native of Europe and often found in English gardens, bears lime-green florets in early summer.