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.

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.

The thermometer hit a sizzling 32.2c in Chertsey, Surrey yesterday (sat) and temperatures are predicted to stay high today (sun).

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

Simon, 71, said: "It's very nice as we've got an area near the house that's very sunny.

"We can sit in the sun surrounded by palm trees, bamboo and some umbrella trees which come from South East Asia.

"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.

"It's very tropical, it's certainly not like Sheffield - that's for sure.

"It's got a lot of Chinese Windmill palm trees and some of them are around 30ft (9m) tall.

"There's around 16 of them all around the seated area so it's a very tropical atmosphere."

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.