A Home That Grew With Our Garden
（Set in St Ives, Cornwall, UK）
Based on a true story / Inspired by real client experiences
I’m Lila, a horticulturist obsessed with Cornish wildflowers and cliff-side gardens.
He’s Elias, a freelance architect who left London to design homes that belong to the coast—not fight against it.
We fell in love between sea thrift and stone walls, and we planned everything:
a small house overlooking St Ives Bay, our wedding in the garden we’d grow together, and a life slow enough to watch the tide change.
We bought a quiet plot, secured planning permission, and spent evenings picking tile samples and planting lavender along the boundary.
We weren’t rich, but we were ready.
Then the local contractor laid out the reality.
A traditional Cornish stone cottage would cost £52,000.
And the build timeline?
Twelve full months.
“Materials are backlogged for months,” he said flatly. “Even if I start tomorrow, you won’t move in until next summer.”
That hit harder than any price.
Our wedding was booked in six months.
We’d planned to say our vows in our own garden, in front of the home we’d built.
That evening, we didn’t yell on the beach.
We stood quiet, watching the waves, the weight between us quieter than the wind.
“I can’t marry you in a tent on an empty plot,” I said softly, kneeling to touch the lavender we’d planted. “I wanted our day to feel like home. This just… delays everything we wanted.”
Elias ran a hand through his hair, frustrated not at me, but at the whole situation.
“I can’t magic a stone cottage into existence faster. But I refuse to let our wedding, or us, get stuck waiting for a wall.”
“You think I’m being unreasonable for wanting what we promised each other?” I said, my voice tight.
“I think you’re refusing to see that home doesn’t have to be stone to be real,” he answered.
We didn’t fight loudly.
We just stopped speaking the same language.
For two days, we moved around each other gently, but distant — him buried in blueprints, me tending flowers like they could fix the quiet between us.
No anger, just disappointment.
On the third morning, he set his laptop in front of me, not with an argument, but with a design.
A double-wing expandable home.
Factory pre-built, no messy on-site construction.
Turnkey, ready in weeks, not months.
Premium steel structure, insulated tight against Cornish storms.
Fully equipped, no hidden costs, no endless waiting.
“This doesn’t replace the stone cottage we dreamed of,” he said. “But it lets us have our wedding in our garden. It lets us live now. We can add to it, plant around it, grow it like the flowers you love.”
I looked at the design, then at the lavender, then at him.
I’d been so fixed on what the house should look like, I forgot what it was for.
The home arrived four weeks later.
No dust, no noise, no construction ruining our garden.
They unfolded the wings, and suddenly we had light, space, and warmth — ready the same day.
On our wedding day, we said our vows in the garden we’d planted, with our finished home behind us.
Our guests couldn’t believe it was a prefabricated structure.
They commented on how warm, solid, and bright it was.
Now the wildflowers climb around its walls.
The lavender blooms year-round.
We still talk about maybe adding a stone extension someday.
But we don’t need to wait.
We already have home.