A self-taught gardener has spent 27 years transforming the land outside his bungalow into a spectacular four-season oasis considered one of the finest private gardens in Britain.
Stunning pictures show John Massey’s backyard bursting with glorious summer color, 36 miles west of Birmingham, England.
The 76-year-old has spent almost three decades devoted to his labor of love, planting 20,000 flowers, trees, and shrubs across his ten-acre property.
Despite no formal education, he became a four-time gold medalist at the iconic Chelsea Flower Show.
Not only that, he’s opened up the garden to the public for the last 22 years to raise money for charity—and has recently reached the incredible milestone of half a million pounds ($675,000).
Since it began as a patch of grass in 1998, the garden in Kingswinford, West Midlands, has evolved to feature UK plantings alongside rarer and more exotic species from Japan, South Africa, and Turkey.
“The garden hasn’t really been planned, it’s just evolved over 27 years,” said the retired green-thumb. “I started by the house and just moved out—and just kept going and going. I absolutely love it all.
“We’re all plant nutters and it’s a full-time job looking after it. I usually get up at 7am and take the dogs out and I go around the garden until the last walk at night to check for snails and slugs—usually 10pm until 11pm.”
Nestled against the backdrop of the scenic Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal, John’s gardens have become so vast it now requires four people to help him maintain it.
Each corner is brimming with vibrant flowers and an abundance of greenery, with a range of conifers and shrubs surrounded by ornate pots.
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His inspiration came from the late Princess Greta Sturdza, a Norwegian who established one of France’s finest gardens—Le Vasterival, in Normandy. He told SWNS news agency that they became friends.
“She invited me over and had, in my mind, the greatest garden that I’ve ever seen. She taught me how to garden. Her big thing was transparency pruning, you prune every tree, shrub and conifer so it was its own sculpture in its own right.”
John, who was previously awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s highest honor ‘the Victoria Medal of Honour’, inherited his love of gardening from his grandfather who owned a plant nursery next door. John was asked to take control of it when he was just 18.
He stepped away from day-to-day duties at Ashwood Nurseries in 2000 to focus on his own garden. Since then, John and his team have won over 50 gold medals at royal flower shows.
“We work on three layers. The big trees we raise the canopies and lift the branches; we lift the canopy of the shrubs so that we can work under that.
“Some beds are replanted twice a year. If we want to keep people coming back we need change.”
Summer in the garden is dominated by blue, pink and white hydrangeas, while Autumn has the grass bed and the asters which look their best in September and October. Winter sees various cornus and spindle trees, with Spring bursting full of hellebores, bulbs, and different narcissus, anemones, and viburnums—all ensuring that the garden is always well-stocked and blooming.
“There are certain plants we don’t grow as we’re in a real frost pocket,” he explained in an interview with SWNS news. ‘We try and grow plants that are hardy in this area.
“We’ve got a wonderful selection of conifers, both dwarf and large varieties. Witch hazels are often considered to be most abundant, with over 40 different varieties.
“I do love the whole garden—I love it all. It is constantly changing, with something majoring on different groups of plants right the way through the season.
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“We had the Danish horticulture society here the other day and they said each corner there’s something different to look at.”
The site is open to the public between February and December every Saturday, for an admission price of £8 a ticket.
“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 realize you don’t know.
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“A friend of mine described horticulture as the slowest form of art as it takes 20 years to reach its maturity.
“I wouldn’t like to think how much I’ve spent on it. It’s a passion, but it would be frightening to know. The main thing is we’ve raised a lot of money for good causes in the process.”
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