Subject: Hello to Bedford!

I was raised there.

Of course, I'm now in Houston, TX and haven't even been to Bedford for many, many years.

When I was there I built a brick "thing" in the garden - I was wondering if it is still there. It was a ghastly yellow-brick raised garden in front of a red-brick victorian house at *** ****** *** **.

If you're ever over that way, any chance of a reminder pic of the house and/or raised garden, if it still exists?

Dave P.

Well, faced with such a nice request, how could we possibly resist?

Frankly, we're a bit disappointed. We couldn't find any sign of the purported yellow brick infrastructure. Probably the subsequent inhabitants of this house had good taste and it was the first thing to go when the revolution came. And when I say that I'm not accusing the occupiers of being communists, just radicals in the broadest gardening tradition.

Heard about your site on the R4 Today programme today - I expect you will be deluged with similar e-mails. My family has always been on the outlook for dreadful horticultural expression and your site could bring this to the nation - why stop at Bedford?!

I have often thought that if I lived in Florida I would have to join the group that 'liberates' gardens of plastic flamingos. I suppose the nearest thing in the UK are the garden gnome liberators - who then send the owners postcards showing where their garden friends (fiends?) have been apparently 'holidaying'! In a village in Northumberland that we once lived in, a grotesque 'Roman Goddess' statue suffered a similar fate - marvellous! She returned home one night and the mystery was never solved.

I attach a photo of a local garden, which excels in kitsch awfulness. It has been built with buckets of love and effort, and for that I greatly admire it, but that doesn't diminish its' awfulness none the less.

Gladys (somewhere in East Anglia!)

Whilst a garden full of gnomes and fake animals is almost too obvious, we have to hand it to Gladys for finding quite such a spectacular example. The owner is obviously confused about the inanimate ontology of her pet plastic, because he/she appears to have two of them mating on that far right of the photo. He/she has also erected a MiniPicketFence™ to protect them from falling into the pond.

How's this for the front garden of someone who purports to be a member of "Hedgeline" the campaign for the abolition of high hedges.

A standard by which all other gardens should be judged no doubt. Note the twin rubbish bin features outside the dining room window. No far to chuck the old chicken carcass methinks.

Three evergreen trees directly outside the window. So busy looking at other people's trees he hasn't noticed his own!!!

Bill (somewhere in London)

Nothing like a hypocrite, wouldn't you say? It also appears as though this horticultural vigilante has been poisoning his own hedges, browning under the glare of the trees. A pang of guilt, perhaps, or the result of chicken carcass leakage from the two bins.