A dad is ensuring the memory of his late wife lives on by decorating his conifer trees every year for Christmas and making people smile.

David Hampson lives in St Lawrence Forstal, Canterbury - a route often used by patients travelling from the Kent and Canterbury Hospital who may have received bad news from doctors.

His wife Sara had the idea to decorate the trees outside their home after she was diagnosed in 2020 with paranasal melanoma, a rare tumour of the head and neck.

Despite receiving the devastating news, the mum-of-two hoped to bring a smile to others on their way back from the hospital.

Sara sadly died in June 2021 aged 51, but David has carried on the tradition in her honour.

The 54-year-old told KentOnline: “We didn't realise when we lived here that people walk up here to appointments and then walk back down and the mood that they might have been in.

“That was until then we started to walk back down in that type of mood. To be able to do something that made people smile was the intention.”

This year, the trees have big eyes, yellow noses and red ‘clothes’ and are inspired by Christmas ‘gonks’.

And Sara’s idea has worked, as people have stopped David in the street and posted cards praising his efforts.

“You can see people stopping and looking and smiling and taking photos,” he said.

“I had a woman stop me in the summer and say, ‘Are you the man that decorates his trees?’

“I got home Monday night and followed a car up with two school-aged children in it that just went up to the house, stopped, looked, stayed five or 10 minutes and drove off again.”

David - who is dad to sons Harry, 21, and Joe, 19 - finds happiness in being able to remember his wife each time he sees the trees.

The Tesco employee said: “It’s nice to have something there that reminds me of her.

“I sent it to all her friends once it goes up too, and they all ask when they are going up.”

The mammoth task of putting the decorations up takes about six hours and two people.

David keeps adding to and changing the huge display. New additions this year were lights, orange space hoppers as the trees’ noses and painted beach balls for eyes.

Sara was “always trying to make people smile”, David recalled.

“She was loved by all and she would love what we are doing now,” he said.

“She was always smiling.”

The mum’s cancer battle was a gruelling one, and she lost an eye in the process.

Despite the pain, she would always tell the community nurses who cared for her and allowed her to stay at home: “I’m alright.”

“It was awful, absolutely awful,” David added.

“But she was amazingly positive right to the end and she'd be over the moon that we're doing what we're doing.”

While the majority of responses are positive, one anonymous neighbour took umbrage with the display in an isolated incident.

David said: “It was sad and I was angry, but I didn’t stoop [to their level] and they've gone back up with eyes and they're watching whoever it was.

“So we've answered it with humour really.”

He hopes to continue the family tradition and keep making his display bigger and better for years to come.

Other Christmas decorations have caught people's attention in Kent this year.

A home in Boughton-Under-Blean with 80,000 lights and 3,000 ornaments is so bright it can be seen from the A2.

The display is put up annually in memory of the owner’s baby son who died at two weeks old.