The Trustees of the Millvina Fund are pleased to announce that a garden honouring the memory of the final Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, will be created and dedicated in time for Titanic's 2012 centennial.

The Millvina Fund, originally created to assist with Millvina's nursing home care costs, attracted donations from all over the world, including generous contributions from actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and film producer James Cameron.

When Millvina died, the Fund’s Trustees – Una Reilly of the Belfast Titanic Society, David Hill of the British Titanic Society and Charles Haas of the Titanic International Society in the USA, contacted all donors to request permission to modify the Fund’s purpose to permit creation of a permanent memorial tribute to Millvina, and all but a handful of donors agreed to the change, with donation refunds sent to those disagreeing.

The garden will be accorded a prime location adjacent to the main entrance of the new Sea City Museum now being constructed at Southampton’s Civic Centre. The Museum, which will tell Titanic’s story from the city’s unique local perspective to tens of thousands of annual visitors, will itself open in April 2012.

The Fund’s Trustees have worked in close cooperation with the Southampton City Council, with Cliff Brown, Parks Development Officer of the city’s Environment Directorate, and the city’s professional landscape designers to create a garden in the form of an ellipse surrounded by a privet hedge, accompanied by a wide variety of perennial flowers and shrubs known for their color, fragrance and varying visual textures. The hedge will enclose a grassy area, with two curved stone benches facing each other across the ellipse’s longest dimension, and in the center of the garden will be a granite plinth, dedicating the garden. On its sloping upper surface will appear the etched words,

THIS GARDEN IS DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF
MILLVINA DEAN
THE YOUNGEST AND FINAL TITANIC SURVIVOR
2 FEBRUARY 1912 - 31 MAY 2009
“HAVE A KIND HEART AND
A SENSE OF HUMOUR.”

Fittingly, the design for the stone’s shape, independently chosen by Southampton’s design team, echoes the shape of the stones for Titanic’s victims buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia, though the garden’s stone will be taller, at one metre (39”) high. Any funding remaining after actual construction costs have been met will endow a fund for periodic replantings and maintenance of the area.

The Millvina Fund’s Trustees feel this lovely permanent garden will be a fitting tribute to Millvina, very much in keeping with her preference for informality and her love of flowers, while adding beauty and a place for reflection and relaxation to her hometown and Titanic’s home port. They hope that museum visitors will take time to visit the garden and reflect upon Millvina’s long life, her cheerful personality and her love of people.