A green-fingered dad has kept cool this weekend as Britain sweltered in a heatwave - in the incredible back garden 'jungle' he's spent 35 years nurturing.<br /><br />Brits were warned to stay out of the sun from 11am to 3pm this weekend wear shades and a hat as the Met Office issued a heat warning.<br /><br />The thermometer hit a sizzling 32.2c in Chertsey, Surrey yesterday (sat) and temperatures are predicted to stay high today (sun).<br /><br />But Dr Simon Olpin's back garden is the perfect place to bask in the searing heat as it's an 8,000-square-foot tropical paradise complete with 25ft palm trees<br /><br />Simon, 71, said: "It's very nice as we've got an area near the house that's very sunny. <br /><br />"We can sit in the sun surrounded by palm trees, bamboo and some umbrella trees which come from South East Asia.<br /><br />"It's a very green backdrop then further into the garden, it goes into the jungle as it has some more large, tall trees and a tropical hut.<br /><br />"It's very tropical, it's certainly not like Sheffield - that's for sure.<br /><br />"It's got a lot of Chinese Windmill palm trees and some of them are around 30ft (9m) tall. <br /><br />"There's around 16 of them all around the seated area so it's a very tropical atmosphere."<br /><br />Simon has been passionate about nature since he was a boy but due to his fear of flying, he has never been able to travel the world and see any jungles. <br /><br />So the dad-of-three has brought the jungle to his suburban garden in Sheffield, South Yorks., after planting his first tree from a ‘small pot’ back in 1987. <br /><br />And since then it's grown to have more than 100 species of plants, with 25-foot palm trees which tower over the sprawling garden.<br /><br />Simon, a consultant clinical biochemist, moved to the house from Cambridge in 1987 and described the garden as a 'black canvas' that required a lot of 'trial and error'. <br /><br />But the keen gardener said he couldn’t put a number on the number of hours or money he had spent perfecting his project over the last three decades.
