A DROITWICH businessman has gone from messing about on the water to messing about in the garden.

Chris Hill has used his expertise in narrow boat design to carve out a niche in the burgeoning luxury garden room sector. The 46-years-old is quickly securing orders nationwide for his new Hanbury-based Garden Hideouts business, utilising the small space specialism that his New & Used Boat Company has used to corner the luxury canal boat market.

He explained: "The skills and knowledge of 25 years at the top of narrow boat, wide beam and Dutch barge design and sales has definitely given us a head start. Plus, our after sales service on the boat interiors is second to none too and this has seamlessly transferred to Garden Hideouts.

“A particular selling point is each shepherd hut and pod inner is created by a specialist interior designer and comes ready fitted and furnished for all sorts of uses – like a study, hobby room, play den, entertainment hub, teenage hangout, extra bedroom. Commercially speaking, they’re also ideal for a home office, treatment room, sauna, au pair or staff suite and even paying guest accommodation.

"I’m very confident that Garden Hideouts is leading the way in offering such a wide range of floor plans and professionally customised features to cover so many different outdoor living scenarios. With fitted modern luxuries as standard and a host of optional extras too, these unique garden rooms are expertly hand crafted for (and put together in) the garden with no planning permission to worry about, tricky access issues, messy disruption or costly building works required.

"Customers from in and around Worcestershire and the West Midlands come and experience the fully kitted out showhome at our Hanbury Wharf premises, but because of the free site survey we’ve also visited and secured customers as far away as Wales, Dorset and Kent.

“There’s been a real surge of interest from the hospitality industry too with the likes of boutique hotels, gastro pubs, stately homes and holiday parks (in both the UK and Northern Europe) seeing the benefits of additional luxury (and quirky) suites in their grounds."