Man Spent 27 Years Turning His Bungalow’s Empty Yard Into an Oasis — now It Thrives in All 4 Seasons

At 76 years old, John Massey (@garden.johns) still hasn’t retired. 36 miles west of Birmingham, England, he works in a full-time job starting from 7 am till 11 pm in the night. The hours are longer than those spent by most of the corporate company employees, yet Massey loves it. He has been working in this job for the past 27 years, and he doesn’t plan to retire anytime soon. Every morning, after waking up, he steps out of his bungalow with his dogs, Willow and Maggie, to reach his workplace. Strangely enough, the office has no workstation, no cabin, and no computers. Instead, it is punctuated with flowers and crabapple trees.

A delicate rose, the color of lemony yellow, totters in the breeze. Along a trail, there’s a grass bed dotted with hardy chrysanthemums. Another patch is sprayed with the scented purple flowers of butterfly bush. Near the old stumpery, silver flowers studded on a tree canopy glimmer. In contrast to them, there are also the plant babies who love shade more than light.

Each day, Massey ventures into this green office, beholding the scenic backdrop of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal, and he encounters a new episode of the plant party. But 27 years ago, until 1998, there was no sign of all this animation. It was just a patch of land in the industrial heartlands of Dudley that seemingly tried to catch his attention. When Massey moved into his bungalow in Kingswinford, West Midlands, this barren piece of land stirred his imagination, which crashed against his immense love for nature.

Over the next few years, he managed to recruit a “dream team” composed of gardeners and nature lovers who helped him transform the image of this grassy patch into “pure fantasy,” as he described to SWNS. Starting with a few varieties of exotic plants, the garden went thronging with species from Japan, South Africa, and Turkey. "The garden hasn’t really been planned, it’s just evolved over 27 years,” Massey told Stour Bridge News. Today, the vast chunk of land is bursting with over 20,000 plants, trees, shrubs, and flowers. "It really is an all-day thing. I started by the house and just moved out, and just kept going and going. I absolutely love it all,” he said.

The initial point of inspiration came from the late Princess Greta Sturdza, a Norwegian who established one of France’s finest gardens - Le Vasterival, in Normandy. Before her death, when Massey got an opportunity to meet her in person, she taught him the various intricacies related to the art of gardening. Being a self-taught gardener with no formal education in the field, Massey was overjoyed to learn techniques like “transparency pruning,” which involves pruning every tree, shrub, and conifer, so “it was its own sculpture in its own right."

The news outlet revealed that Massey and his team have claimed a grand array of awards, including 50 gold medals at the Royal Flower Shows, four of them coming from the esteemed Chelsea Flower Show. Massey, however, hasn’t stopped learning and perfecting his craft. “I’ve been in horticulture for 57 years and I'm still learning, it’s one of those subjects where the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know,” he said in an innocent confession.

The trophies glinting on the shelves of his house have only spurred his empathetic spirit, which he channels via the various philanthropic and charity endeavours. According to the news outlet, he has even raised half a million pounds, precisely $675,000, for charitable causes, which in turn nourishes his own inner spirit. In an interview with the BBC, he exclaimed, "I'm very, very lucky. I've led a charmed life.”