The jungle garden of Millhouses

Good afternoon members — and welcome to Tuesday’s Tribune.

Millhouses isn’t exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find a jungle. But then Dr Simon Olpin isn’t your ordinary gardener. The former children’s hospital consultant says his garden was a “blank canvas” when he and his wife arrived in Sheffield from Cambridge in 1987. He originally started on the project of bringing the tropics to him as he was scared of flying.

Simon’s garden got a lot of press coverage last year, but we wanted to see what it was looking like this summer and have a look at some of the other exotic fauna he keeps in his house. He also offers guided tours of his palm and bamboo forest in aid of charities chosen by the National Garden Scheme. Details of how to book a tour can be found at the end of the article.

We’d also like to thank Andy Brown, who took the amazing photos for the jungle garden piece. He’s a professional photographer based in Sheffield and his website can be found here. We’ll also be sharing some photos that we couldn't fit in the piece on Twitter later.

Mini-briefing

1. A Sheffield asylum seeker has finally been granted refugee status after 11 years of applications and appeals. Simba Mujakachi, 32, was a child when he first came to Sheffield from Zimbabwe, where his father Victor is wanted by the government for speaking out against former leader Robert Mugabe. In 2019, the personal trainer was left permanently paralysed by a stroke after he was unable to afford medication due to his asylum status. He has now had £100,000 of his NHS debt wiped. However, despite his legal victory, he says he can’t celebrate as he has been left in such a precarious financial position and could soon be facing eviction from his home.
2. Great news that Park Hill flats’ famous “I Love You, Will U Marry Me” graffiti is back in pride of place. The graffiti was removed in 2021 to allow the concrete bridge to be fully renovated, but was put back exactly as it used to be on Monday by a specialist team. The work was completed in the presence of Jason Lowe: the person who originally painted it in 2001. The message was originally to his then-girlfriend Clare Middleton, who sadly died from cancer at the age of just 30 in 2007 (this Guardian article explains the full story). At the moment the slogan is just painted on but it is understood that the neon lights that were there before will be added soon. Thanks to resident Sophie Jo-Anna Walker for the below photo.
3. A must for all Hendos fans is Kelham Island Museums’ lunchtime talk on Thursday, June 16. A Saucy Tale: A History of Henderson’s Relish promises the “true and remarkable history of Sheffield’s favourite sauce and best-kept secret, from humble beginnings in a Victorian grocery shop to celebrity endorsements and modern production in a state-of-the-art factory”. The talk will be given by academic Dr Mark Dawson who has been researching and writing about the history of food and drink for 20 years. He specialises in the culinary history of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in the 16th and 17th centuries. The free, 45-minute talk begins at 1.00pm.

Millhouses is about as middle-class as Sheffield gets — the kind of neighbourhood where having a mauve front door could be considered dangerously subversive. A place where Hyacinth Bucket would feel right at home. But what I’m looking for today is a bit more than a tasteless extension or eyebrow-raising gazebo. I’m looking for a jungle garden.

I’ve been given a house number, but as I drive down the wide tree-lined Dobcroft Road, it quickly becomes apparent which one it is. Huge palm trees frame the entrance to the house and the front garden is a mass of giant fronds and leaves. I ring the doorbell and wait, marvelling at the verdant splendour around me. I only have three plants on my balcony and they aren’t long for this world. 

Greeting me at the door is Dr Simon Olpin, a tall, slim man of 70 with a short grey moustache. He’s wearing a light fleece pullover, jeans and flip-flops. From the moment he opens his mouth it’s clear that he — like many of his plants — is not a native. His friendly West Country accent (Gloucestershire, he later tells me) has stuck with him through his three decades in Sheffield.

Simon and his wife moved here from Cambridge in 1987 for him to work as a consultant clinical scientist specialising in genetic metabolic disease at Sheffield Children's Hospital. His wife Julie already knew of her husband’s fascination with horticulture and wisely guided him towards a property with a decent-sized garden. At that time, other than a birch tree in the back corner and a hawthorn, the 40ft by 200ft plot was just grass. “A blank canvas,” he tells me as we wade through the undergrowth.

He had already amassed a small collection of exotic plants while he was studying for his PhD in Cambridge, but in the North the colder climate posed a problem. Nevertheless, over the years he has created what is essentially a small Sheffield jungle: a set of trees just about hardy enough to survive tough South Yorkshire winters.

The freezing winter of 2010 was especially harsh. Millhouses is around 430 feet above sea level and fairly exposed to the weather. The hillier parts of the city get a lot of snow and that year’s deluge almost spelled disaster. Fortunately, everything in his garden is so tightly packed that the plants seem to form a kind of microclimate, protecting each other from the worst of the weather.

Simon’s jungle is built around three main plant types: palms, bamboo and scheffleras (or as they are more commonly known, umbrella plants). The first thing I encounter as I walk out of the patio doors, however, is a giant lily which looks incredible but also like it might eat me at any moment. Astonishingly, he tells me that in the winter the plant, which at the moment is as tall as I am, shrinks all the way back to ground level (and, if we have a particularly cold snap, he puts a blanket over it to keep it warm).

Of the palms, there are around 45 large ones with trunks ranging from a short and stubby three feet to an imposing 20 feet. Many are giant versions of the first plant he bought for the garden back in 1987: an 18-inch tall Chinese windmill palm. Most of these are covered in an incredibly tough fibre, which Simon tells me used to be weaved into weatherproof hats and coats by the inhabitants of places the palms originally came from. The leaves too have been used for anything from woven baskets to roof thatch.

Their sheer variety of bamboo is mind-boggling. A stunning inky-blue species that looks like something out of a painting contrasts beautifully with a bright gold one next to it. Another a few feet away is jet black. Simon tells me some of the species are “runners” and some are “clumpers”. Clumpers are easier to manage as they just grow upwards in one tightly grouped area. Runners on the other hand sometimes shoot under the ground, popping up in other parts of the garden or occasionally in someone else’s. 

One clump he shows me is about 15-feet across and is made up of around 150 separate bamboo canes (or culms as he tells me they are technically called). These can grow up to 10cm a day during the spring, with one of Simon’s growing from the floor to 15 feet this year alone. In the centre of the clump is a giant heap of manure which he says is needed to supercharge the much shorter British growing season.

Also prominent are scheffleras or umbrella plants. These will be familiar to many gardeners and are also commonly used as houseplants — but Simon’s looks like something out of The Day of the Triffids. The central stamen of one looks strangely and mysteriously sentient. It’s differently coloured than the normal leaves and has a furry texture. Simon says it will eventually fall down to look like the others, but I silently hope I’m not here when it does.

“A lot of people might think it looks like a bloody mess — but it’s meant to look like a jungle,” he tells me. As if to prove his point, we reach a clearing in the centre of the garden in which it feels like we could be in South East Asia somewhere. It’s only then that I am fully aware of the giants that Simon had hidden in here. A huge eucalyptus with a trunk that must be five feet across towers over the space. It’s one of the biggest trees I’ve ever seen and yet is entirely hidden from the house by the thick forest I’ve just waded through. Also hiding near the clearing is a 10-foot-long (replica) crocodile. “I just felt it fitted the theme,” he says.

On our way around the garden, we bump into a few of Simon’s neighbours. They are happy to chat if a little bemused by his obsession. At one point Simon asks me to stress in the piece how grateful he is to them and say they are “very tolerant”, but I don’t think I really need to. They smile and wave at us as we make our way through the dense forest, presumably thinking I’m just another exotic garden nutter coming to get some tips. “We all have our eccentricities,” he tells me. “And this is mine.”

Simon’s wife Julie is a ward sister at Sheffield Children’s Hospital and isn’t there when I visit, so I have to make do with Simon’s take on what she makes of it all. “It has been a bone of contention over the years,” he admits. He says Julie insists she is interested in his plants and animals — but that generally she just lets him get on with it. Having said that, the garden’s bamboo hut which Simon built himself does come in very handy when entertaining, something they both enjoy.

As we walk back into the house from the jungle garden, we stop to inspect two slightly scary-looking vivariums, filled with exotic plants. Inside are dart frogs, some blue and some emerald, which Simon breeds. These tiny creatures, some no bigger than your fingernail, are so-called because some of their species’ skin secretions are used to create poison darts in Central and South America (although these ones are completely harmless). 

Behind the vivariums is a large conservatory, which he also wants to show me before I go. A cold fear grips me as I start to panic that it could be home to some kind of giant bird-eating tarantula but thankfully it’s just my overactive imagination. Once inside he plucks a passion flower and gives it to me to smell. Its scent is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Also hanging over us are carnivorous pitcher plants that trap and dissolve insects in their nectar.

“Global warming is rushing towards us,” says Simon gnomically. Being in his sweltering conservatory, it certainly feels like it. “We think we know everything but we haven’t got a clue really and soon it’ll be too late,” he continues. “Then we’ll move into the post-human.” As I leave he says he isn’t optimistic about the chances for our species. But I think there’s a bit of him that likes to imagine one day the whole world will look like his Millhouses jungle garden.

Between June and October, Simon offers pre-booked tours of his garden with the National Garden Scheme. For £12 a head (groups of between 5 and 20 people), you get tea and homemade cake and a personally guided tour, with proceeds going to charity.