Gardeners' World couple transformed bungalow's garden into stunning subtropical paradise

Gardeners' World saw a couple show off their bungalow's subtropical garden paradise which took nearly 30 years to create. The programme on Friday evening (October 25), featured a plantsman’s paradise at Fullers Mill in Suffolk and explored history of Britain's enduring love affair with houseplants.

Presenter Monty Don shared a feature focusing on Dawn and Steve from Yelland in North Devon, who overhauled their bungalow's bland and uninspiring outdoor space into a subtropical paradise.

After meeting at university, the pair relocated to North Devon 27 years ago and quickly wanted to turn their bungalow's garden into something special. The segment shared old photos of the basic and flat garden before its overhaul, which featured multiple sheds, some shrubbery and trees.

Garden enthusiast Dawn said: "We moved to North Devon, 27 years ago, and started our garden. We basically said, that's the size garden we want, and the bungalow is fine.

"When we moved in, we had grass on about a third of the garden. We had municipal concrete slabs, six sheds.

"We had a dog house. We dug all sorts of things up."

Their garden has hardy/hardyish passionflowers as well as a revamped pond and seating areas, new raised fence beds and a new greenhouse.

The garden features numerous passion flowers, beautiful plants and ones that gave off alluring aromas. Steve quipped: "If passion flowers had an Interpol, we'd be on the Most Wanted list".

Explaining his stunning garden, he added: "The sort of plants we grow in our garden are sort of bold, tropical things with big leaves, lots of colour, high scent.

"I'm a sucker for big and exciting and rapidly expanding things. That's the backbone of the garden, bananas and cannas and gingers."

When asked what time of the year he prefers, Steve noted: "Our favourite time is really from July onwards. Just the energy coming off the garden as things get bigger and grow up is just amazing."

The couple, Steve and Dawn, take pride in tending to their garden themselves, ensuring its continuous bloom. Demonstrating his propagation technique, Steve showed how he uses coir plugs and jam jars to grow new passion flower plants to be added to their exotic landscape.

After nearly three decades of dedication, the pair have no intention of slowing down or moving. Dawn said: "It was quite fortunate that when we bought the garden with the bungalow attached, it meant it future proofed it.

"So in our dotage and retirement, we've got a bungalow so we haven't got to move again and change into another garden."

Steve added: "After 27 years of gardening here, this has become part of us, part of our garden, and I can't imagine living anywhere else because this is so nice."

According to their website, Dawn and Steven have previously opened up their garden to the public. The garden forms part of the National Gardens Scheme off and they earned their 10-year trowel in 2019.

Monty Don, following the feature, commended the couple's impressive garden and was particularly impressed by Steve's innovative approach to cuttings. He commented: "I think it's a very group tip about the cuttings - I use those coir plugs often but I've never used the jam jar technique."

"It's a good idea."