The Front Garden (1979)

The Front Garden is a celebration of the English at their favourite pastime. It's the grand English gardens that always get noticed but front gardens can be just as varied and just as remarkable. And so are the people who create these small showpieces, in front of council houses, thatched cottages, bungalows and follies. It's a way of telling the world what we can do, even of revealing what sort of people we are. The results are some astonishing gardens - a front garden with 13 cathedrals; a hedge like a life-size steam-engine; old-fashioned rambling cottage gardens, formal brilliant flower-patterned gardens, gardens inhabited by gnomes, gardens made with shells, even a garden without a single plant. And even more astonishing are the people who dreamed up these masterpieces.