Gardens of remembrance: how war cemeteries are adapting to a changing climate
This summer, the team at Medjez-El-Bab worked through temperatures of 50°C. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery lies in Tunisia's Medjerda Valley, among olive groves and farmland, and it holds more than 2,900 Commonwealth servicemen who gave their lives during the North Africa campaign from November 1942-May 1943.
Walking between the headstones, I always find myself reading the ages. So many of these men were barely older than my own sons, and some were still in their teens. As a father, I never find the emotion diminishes.
On Remembrance Sunday, most of us picture these places as they have looked for a century: rows of white headstones, borders of flowers, and immaculate green lawns. That image is part of what makes them so moving. In a climate like Tunisia, it is also becoming impossible to sustain.
The challenge is one we take very seriously. How do you change the landscape of a place of remembrance without losing its essence and central purpose?
A century of gardening for remembrance
The war cemeteries of the First World War were conceived as gardens from the start. Gertrude Jekyll advised the Imperial War Graves Commission, now the CWGC, and produced planting designs for several cemeteries in France, including Warlincourt Halte and Gézaincourt. Her designs were not always followed to the letter, but her feeling for the English country garden shaped how these places look today, and deeply influenced Edwin Lutyens's approach to them.
The idea was simple and powerful. Men who died far from home would rest somewhere that felt like home: flowering borders at the foot of the headstones, clipped lawns, and the calm order of a well-kept English garden. A hundred years on, the Commission's gardeners still care for these landscapes in more than 150 countries and territories, many of them nothing like an English garden in climate.
That tradition is worth protecting. But protecting it doesn't mean freezing it.
Why war cemeteries are under strain from climate change
A green lawn in the Medjerda Valley is an act of will. The region has around five months of drought each year, and keeping turf green through it takes irrigation, fertiliser and labour, year after year. As summers grow hotter, that effort grows, and the lawn still struggles.
The CWGC is rethinking this approach across its sites. The aim is to contextualise these places, to embed them in their locality using planting that needs far less water and other resources, without compromising the dignity and restraint that commemoration demands. Medjez-El-Bab is one of the places where that shift is happening now.
A conversation about the next hundred years
In October, I was invited to the CWGC's conference in Paris, which brought together the Commission, its partners and heritage experts to discuss how sites of remembrance should be cared for in the future. The backdrop was UNESCO's 2023 decision to inscribe the First World War cemeteries and memorials of the Western Front as a World Heritage Site.
What struck me was how complex the balance is. These places must be conserved, but they must also be sustainable, able to cope with a changing climate, and meaningful to people who have no living memory of the wars. One panel discussion on visitor experience stayed with me in particular: the question is not only how we preserve heritage, but how we help people connect with it.
The most moving part was hearing about the Commission's work to identify and properly commemorate service personnel who were historically missed or under-represented. It was a reminder that remembrance is never finished. It has to be renewed by each generation, and so do the landscapes that hold it.
Medjez-El-Bab: redesigning with dignity
At Medjez-El-Bab, we have redesigned the cemetery to reduce irrigated turf by more than 85%. In its place comes planting suited to the valley: native species, and others chosen because they tolerate both intense summer heat and winter cold.
Olive, bitter orange, pomegranate and jacaranda trees are already in. They belong to this landscape, and the olives in particular tie the cemetery to the groves around it. Next comes underplanting beneath the trees, and gravel gardens around the headstones, using thyme, lavender, native grasses and tough Mediterranean shrubs.
The design question was never only about water. A war cemetery has to feel cared for, ordered and calm. Every planting decision was tested against that: does it keep the headstones as the focus, and does it still say that these men are remembered? The headstones will remain the focus, where plants have been selected not to grow above 30cm or so in height, but additional space has been made for taller plants and grasses that will serve to soften the regimented lines of the stones without diminishing their powerful visual impact.
Beyond Tunisia
The same thinking is now being explored closer to home. We are in early concept-stage work at Mazargues War Cemetery in Marseille and Les Baraques Military Cemetery in Sangatte, near Calais. Each sits in a very different landscape, with a different climate and ecology, so each will need its own answer.
The principle is the same everywhere: learn from what thrives in that place, and plant for the conditions it will face over the coming decades. A cemetery designed this way should be attuned to its sense of place, require fewer resources and a different but exciting skillset from those who care for it, and offer more to the wildlife around it.
Gardening as an act of remembrance
The people who designed the first war cemeteries understood something important: a garden is a way of continuing to care. Every border weeded and every lawn mown says that someone has not forgotten.
That meaning doesn't depend on a lawn. It depends on a landscape that is clearly looked after, and that will still be looked after in fifty years. Designing for the climate ahead is how we make sure these places can go on doing what they were made to do.
This Remembrance Sunday, we will be thinking of the men at Medjez-El-Bab, and of the gardeners from the Commission who care for them.
FAQs
How are war cemeteries adapting to climate change? In hot, dry regions, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is moving away from irrigated lawns towards planting that needs far less water, fertiliser and labour. At Medjez-El-Bab in Tunisia, we are reducing irrigated turf by more than 85%, replacing it with native and heat- and cold-tolerant planting, while keeping the dignity and order a war cemetery demands.
Will war cemeteries lose their lawns? Not everywhere. Each cemetery is designed for its own climate and setting. Where a lawn can only survive on constant irrigation, as in the Medjerda Valley, replacing much of it with suitable planting is the more sustainable way to keep the cemetery cared for.
Are the First World War cemeteries a World Heritage Site? Yes. In 2023, UNESCO inscribed the funerary and memory sites of the First World War on the Western Front, in Belgium and France, on the World Heritage List. That status brings new attention to how these landscapes are conserved and adapted for the future.
Who designed the gardens of the First World War cemeteries? The cemeteries were designed by architects including Edwin Lutyens, with the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll advising the Imperial War Graves Commission. Jekyll produced planting designs for several cemeteries in France, and her vision of the English country garden shaped how these places still look today.
What is being planted at Medjez-El-Bab? Olive, bitter orange, pomegranate and jacaranda trees are already planted. Underplanting and gravel gardens around the headstones will follow, using thyme, lavender, native grasses and tough Mediterranean shrubs suited to around five months of drought each year.
Does changing the planting change the meaning of a war cemetery? It shouldn't, and that is the central test of the design. The headstones remain the focus. What matters is that the landscape is visibly cared for and can go on being cared for as the climate changes.
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