From flight line to flower bed: How one veteran's garden became a living tribute

When Heather Smith tends her Toowoomba garden, she does more than pull weeds and water seedlings. She is healing. She is remembering. And this September, when the gates swing open for the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers Garden Competition, she hopes visitors will feel it too.

Heather served almost nine years in the Royal Australian Air Force, enlisting in April 1985 before accepting a voluntary redundancy in late 1993. As a Supply Clerk, she worked across two very different postings. At No. 2 Stores Depot in Sydney, her team was the backbone of supply for the entire East Coast of Australia. At RAAF Base Pearce in Western Australia, she worked on the flight line with 25 Squadron to fuel aircrafts, strap pilots in and load and unload cargo planes.

Her dream, she admits, was to become a loadmaster – but women were not permitted in the role at the time.

"About 18 months after I discharged, they changed the policy," she laughs. "If only I’d known!”

Gardening has been a constant throughout Heather’s life. She traces it back to her British-born father, a wartime baby raised during rationing whose grandfather kept an allotment. Vegetables, chickens, fruit trees – growing things was simply part of life. When Heather joined the Air Force and moved between postings, a small patch of garden followed her wherever she landed. Miniature roses in Perth. Dahlias. Whatever the soil and climate would allow.

"I guess it's always been in my blood to garden," she says. "Everywhere you go, gardening is different – the soil is different and things that succeed in one place don't succeed in others."

That spirit of adaptability – familiar to anyone who has served – now shapes how Heather approaches her garden up on the Toowoomba Range. She grows annuals alongside perennials, knowing that some things are meant to be temporary whilst others are meant to endure. It is, she reflects, not unlike the rhythm of military life itself.

"I plant perennials because you know they're going to be the background, the bones of the garden," she says. "As a military person, we want to leave a positive legacy. And I think that's why I joined."

A living tribute to those passed

The commemorative heart of the garden is a dedicated "Lest We Forget" area, planted with forget-me-nots – flowers that were tucked into the Bibles and letters of WWI soldiers by their sweethearts – alongside Flanders poppies, blue cornflowers (the French equivalent of the poppy), and a Gallipoli rosemary grown from cuttings traced back to the original site. A flagpole also bears the names of Australian battles.

Alongside the flowers, Heather's husband, who also served, has handcrafted a model Iroquois helicopter from scratch to sit in the space – a nod to their previous life when they were just friends whilst serving in the Royal Australian Air Force.

It is a garden of layers: annual and perennial, personal and collective, grief and growth.

Heather is also planning two morning working bees before the competition opens, inviting young veterans from Oakey RSL Sub Branch, where she is a Life Subscriber, and across the Toowoomba region to come and help finish the garden.

"My mates from the support group we have at the Sub Branch will come and I'm hoping others will too," she says, "even if some of them are just there for the morning tea."

This year, Heather’s entry into the Carnival of Flowers competition is dedicated to her friend Zoe – a horticulturalist and a fellow gardener, who sadly passed away last year.

Heather and Zoe met through their shared love of gardening and her final job before she died was growing tree seedlings at a local nursery down the range. Zoe was passionate about fungi, about the interrelationship of plants and about the quiet intelligence of the natural world.

“Zoe's favourite flowers were sunflowers, so they are planted throughout the space and scattered across the garden, so she can be in every space,” Heather adds.

Green thumb therapy

When asked if Heather would recommend gardening to veterans who may be struggling, she doesn't hesitate to answer with a resounding yes.

“It takes you out of yourself,” she says. “It gives you something else to think about. It stops people being inside their head too much."

For veterans who have seen active service, Heather believes there is power in those quiet moments in the backyard.

“Gardening is almost the opposite of combat. It’s gentle, unhurried and focused on life rather than its absence. It brings you back to a sense of normal,” she says.

“You're in the moment. You're not thinking about anything else except: I'm going to dig this hole. I'm going to put this in there. I'm going to water that.”

The fresh air, the sunshine and the feeling of soil under your hands, Heather sees all of it as part of the healing process.

“It doesn't take a lot of effort, but you get a lot of reward," she says. “You see these things flourish and you go: I did that.”

The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers runs from 18 to 27 September 2026. Heather's garden at 114 Nelson Street, Middle Ridge, will be open to visitors, with wheelchair access, parking for buses, espresso coffee, and a range of souvenirs and plants for sale, all in aid of Protea Place and a local koala rescue hospital.