GURKHA veterans in Colchester got stuck in and helped to create a tranquil reminder of their roots.

Veterans, including many aged in their seventies and eighties, got down on their hands and knees to work alongside relatives and gardening gurus to create the new area at Abbeygate House where they live.

A total of 250 plants, including those of Himalayan origin, now brighten up the area.

The project was born thanks to award-winning gardener Jane Scott Moncrieff who used the same plants from her Gardeners’ World Live garden, which was on display last month.

Jane, who travelled from north Norfolk to help plant the garden in Colchester, said: “I have done two show gardens now for the Gurkha Welfare Trust using Himalayan plants.

“The first one last year was at Sandringham and I got a gold medal and best in show which was rather exciting so I decided to enter one this year and do a larger show, so went to Gardeners’ World Live at Birmingham and got a gold as well.

“I always feel really strongly that everything that is used in a show garden, whether it’s the plants or the materials, it has to have a life afterwards.

“It is just appalling if plants are composted.

“I was determined these plants were going to have a life after the show.”

Jane, whose vision for the garden was of a home-from-home space for retired Gurkhas and their families in the UK, contacted the chairman of the Norfolk Gurkha Welfare Trust.

He put her in touch with its Colchester representatives and along with Udai Gurung, chairman of the Colchester Nepalese Society, and Pam Schomberg, chairwoman of Colchester in Bloom, the project was born.

All the plants have been grown in the UK for decades to have adapted to the environment.

For example, there are rhododendrons, salvias and irises.

Upon completion of the garden, Jane said: “It is amazing.

“It took that team of Ghurkas and their families two hours and they worked hard.

“They were wonderful and some of them are quite elderly and got down on their haunches and got it done.”

Mr Gurung said members of the Nepalese Society had collected the plants from the show in Birmingham using a Colchester in Bloom van and they had been stored at Highwoods Country Park before the planting on Monday.

He added: “It looks brilliant.

“All the flowers here are from the Himalayas and that will please all the residents living there.

“They will feel at home again.”

Previously the space at Abbeygate House contained tired flowers in need of replacing.

The garden at BBC Gardeners’ World Live was entitled The Himalayan Border for The Gurkha Welfare Trust.

Abbeygate House was formerly a council sheltered housing scheme before the Gurkha Homes project housed the veterans, who had settled in Colchester, in 2013.