‘My 95-year-old dad lives in my garden – and he loves it'

Jack Higham has a busy schedule for a 95-year-old. His day usually begins with a two-mile walk, before heading down the road to a community café at lunchtime for a bowl of soup and to catch up with friends.
On Wednesday afternoons, he does an armchair keep-fit class for pensioners and is toying with the idea of joining the circuits session that runs afterwards.
Every evening, Higham sees his daughter, Ruth Deans, for dinner at her house, together with her husband, Hughie, the couple's daughter, Alice, and Alice's partner, Ben. It's not much of a journey, because Jack lives at the end of their garden.
Since July 2023, Higham's home has been a one-bedroom annexe that Deans, 60, and her husband, 65, built outside their 1930s terraced house in the London borough of Bromley.
The family says their set-up could easily be a blueprint for others.
'It's such an effective solution for busy boomers who have elderly parents and adult children living at home,' says Deans, who works in marketing.
'Many homeowners could do this, and you don't need a lot of space. We live in a very average mid-terraced house in suburbia with a narrow garden.'
After Sheila, his wife of over 60 years, died three years ago, Higham was living alone in a large, detached house in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, on the edge of the Peak District.
'I'm fortunate that I'm pretty fit and able,' he says. 'I didn't have any home help and could manage and look after the garden.'
However, after suffering a dizzy spell, when a neighbour ended up having to call an ambulance for him, it hit home how far away he was from Deans, who had been driving up to see him every week, and his other daughter, Rachel, who lives in New York.
'The house wasn't big enough'
'Ruth asked if I'd come and live with her,' Higham says. 'It was an easy decision to make.'
Deans and her father pondered a few options, including selling both their houses and buying somewhere together, or moving Higham into her spare room.
'We'd probably have needed to install a stairlift eventually,' she says. 'Also, at the time, we had both Alice and our son Harry, plus their partners, living with us – and had also taken in a Ukrainian refugee.
'The house, which has four bedrooms, isn't big enough for so many people. So, we hit upon the idea of building a cabin in our garden.'
It took a total of 18 months to get the cabin, which measures 7.6 metres by 5 metres, through the planning system and then built by a local company, Garden Office Buildings.
Deans says the planning process took eight weeks and was straightforward.
'In fact, the council were very good and suggested helpful changes to the spec once they realised Dad's age, including building on a concrete base, which added to the warmth, and increased insulation,' she says. 'We've been really grateful for that.'
Selling Higham's home of 32 years wasn't as simple. The property had spray-foam insulation in the loft, and mortgage lenders are increasingly unwilling to lend against this. However, the family managed to agree a deal with the buyers, who purchased in cash, to reduce the property price and take account of the cost of remediation works.
The cabin, which was mainly funded by the sale of Premium Bonds owned by Sheila, came in at a cost of £70,000, which included building the structure, plumbing, electrics and fitting it out with wardrobes and a bespoke kitchen. The total also covered landscaping the garden, fitting a new garden gate and building two sheds.
Despite being pleased to move closer to his family, it was a wrench for Higham to leave the place he had called home for so many years and in which, as a sub-postmaster for the nearby village of New Whittington, he had been a valued member of the community.
'He had a big circle of friends, and moving 200 miles is a huge lifestyle change for someone in their 90s,' Deans says.
'It was chaos with a lot of mud'
The building of the cabin was also stressful for Deans and her family. To keep costs down, they took it upon themselves to demolish the existing garden shed in which Hughie, a handyman, kept his tools and gardening equipment. Alice, 29, and Harry, 26, were fully involved too and enlisted the help of several of their friends.
For eight months, while the cabin was being built, they stored her husband's tools and equipment in a large white gazebo in the garden.
'The huge tent made it very dark inside the house and we often joked that people passing by must have thought it was a police crime scene,' Deans laughs. 'It was chaos for a while with a lot of mud.'
It was also a huge task for her to oversee the building works while travelling to Derbyshire every week to help her father with the sale process, house viewings and emptying the family home.
'My sister flew in from New York to spend the final two weeks in Derbyshire lugging stuff to charity shops while I was at home encouraging kitchen fitters and decorators to complete,' Deans explains. 'The lawn was only re-laid the day before dad arrived.'
Access to the site was tricky as the house is in the middle of a row, so all materials and waste had to go in via a shared alleyway around the side and back of the terrace.
'Pouring the concrete base for the cabin was a mission because they couldn't get the concrete lorry down the alleyway so they parked it on the road and pumped it round through a hose,' Deans says. 'Everyone around was hanging out of their windows and watching.'
The neighbours were very good about the disruption, mess and having to juggle parked cars around in the alleyway.
'We consulted them all very early on, showed them the plans and probably would not have proceeded if they objected,' Deans says.
'I kept them fully informed throughout, sending them texts, plus wine and biscuits, whenever big plant equipment and skips were due. By the time Dad moved in, they had a welcome party for him.'
'I'm glad we made the leap'
Today, with Higham happily installed, the stress and disruption have been forgotten. His cabin – Deans scolds him playfully for calling it a 'Portakabin' – is cosy and chic, runs on electricity with timber cladding at the front and steel insulated panels on the rear and sides.
There's a bedroom, bathroom and a main living area, which has a fitted kitchen with a dining area, plus a lounge with three armchairs and a television.
'It's quite luxurious,' he says. 'The friends and people who have been to see me have been amazed. It's ample for a single person, with great big sliding doors and, because it's well-insulated, is always lovely and warm.'
All the furniture came from Higham's house so it would feel as much like home as possible.
'He was adamant he had to bring his favourite 40-year-old reclining armchair. It's huge and we weren't sure, looking at the floor plans, whether it would even fit, but it worked out fine and he uses it all the time,' says Deans.
She will often pop into the annexe to find 'one of the boys' watching a sports match on television with her father, who was a keen cricketer and footballer in his younger days.
Higham has embraced the move and made many friends at the Green Bird café in Beckenham, where he goes for lunch most weeks and where, in February, they celebrated his 95 th birthday with a party.
'There must have been 50 people there. It cost me a fortune in cake,' Deans jokes. And, for the family, the arrangement is ideal.
'It required a big commitment from everyone, yet I'm so glad we made the leap,' Deans says. 'My husband and the kids all enjoy doing stuff with dad. Care homes are so expensive and, anyway, going into one wouldn't have been right for him.'
She adds that Higham's cabin has even inspired several friends with elderly parents.
'They're looking into creating similar set-ups in their homes – putting their golden oldies at the bottom of the garden.'

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