Dame Judi Dench has created a wood in her back garden by planting trees in remembrance of friends, relatives and actors who have died, she discloses in a new documentary.

The actress, 82, said she had been naming trees after dead acquaintances for decades in her six acre plot in Surrey, and said she views them as her ‘extended family.’

In the one hour special, ‘Judi Dench, My Passion For Trees’, she told filmmakers how she had planted trees in memory of actors Ian Richardson and Natasha Richardson, as well as her late husband Michael Williams, who died in 2001.

For actor Robert Hardy, who died in August, she planted a yew tree, because Hardy was a published authority and collector of longbows, which were made from the tree.