Neighbours Philip Whicker and Les Carstairs have turned their tiny inner-city front gardens into a blooming tourist attraction. The green-fingered pair even overcame the initial opposition of a housing association who own their homes by transforming their street-side facades into a huge flash of bright colours, upstairs and downstairs. Bus driver Les, 53, and next-door pal Philip, 56, came up smelling of roses after deciding on a way to brighten up their three-storey town houses in Portsmouth, and at minimum cost. Philip, a ferry hand, said:’’ We only have small front gardens. Mine is eig

Neighbours Philip Whicker and Les Carstairs have turned their tiny inner-city front gardens into a blooming tourist attraction. The green-fingered pair even overcame the initial opposition of a housing association who own their homes by transforming their street-side facades into a huge flash of bright colours, upstairs and downstairs. Bus driver Les, 53, and next-door pal Philip, 56, came up smelling of roses after deciding on a way to brighten up their three-storey town houses in Portsmouth, and at minimum cost. Philip, a ferry hand, said:’’ We only have small front gardens. Mine is eight feet long and three feet wide and Les’s is not even as wide. So there was not much room to play with. ‘’ But Les came up with the idea of building wooden boxes to hang out of the windows upstairs and downstairs and all it has cost us so far is about 140 pounds each. The result has been spectacular. ‘’ Our homes are a mass of colour with petunias, sweet peas, jasmine, pansies and marigolds. ‘’As a result we get people knocking on the doors to say how lovely it looks, or just stand and stare in disbelief. We get people driving by who slow up to get a better look and others who compliment on us what we have achieved. To be honest, neither me nor my wife, Paula like gardening much but this is easy. ‘’ All we have to do is make sure it is all watered and the rest is just weeding and dead-heading. I think some of our other neighbours are jealous.’’ Neighbour Les said:’’ I built five boxes of about five feet by nine feet from scrap wood left over by a prominent do-it-yourself store and nature has done the rest. My wife, Sue helped me choose the right plants to make a colourful display and now get people standing outside taking pictures. ‘’ The housing association were not happy at first . They like everything to be uniform but in fairness they came round when I showed them some pictures. Now I think they are quite proud of what we have done.’’ Ends PIC MIKE WALKER, MI

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