An Otley couple are set to feature in a new TV gardening show after a makeover crew battled strong winds and heavy rain to transform their riverside plot.

Yvette and Jim Wilks have lived in the council-owned former lodge house in Bridge Street for five years after swapping their home in Chippendale Rise with a family who wanted a large garden away from the river.

Yvette, 40, and Jim, 49, originally wrote

to Alan Titchmarsh's Ground Force programme asking for a garden makeover

but were turned down. Then, some months later, they were contacted by BBC's Garden Invaders - a spin-off from House Invaders.

Yvette said: "They told me they'd got enough people and I didn't think any more of it, but then I got the letter asking if we were still interested."

Jim, a coach driver for AztecBird whose most famous clients were Boyzone, added: "It couldn't have looked any worse. There was rubbish everywhere and the base of an old garden shed."

The couple, who had to spend the whole day barricaded inside their living room while work was going on, had a simple brief for the small garden - somewhere nice to sit in the summer and easy to maintain.

And although Yvette would have liked to have seen her lawn disappear completely, the couple gave their new garden an enthusiastic thumbs up.

"I think it's really nice. It will look a lot better once the grass is dry. It's given me something to work on. Before I just didn't know what to do with it, but now I feel inspired," said Yvette.

"It was a lovely day. The presenter Mark Evans was wonderful and really good fun. It's not as dramatic a change as they do on Ground Force, but it has given me something to work with," she added.

As part of the daytime show, which is due to be screened next month, Yvette and Jim were asked nine questions with gardening prizes if they got them right.

The couple answered eight of the questions right - winning a pair of wooden deckchairs, a mini greenhouse and potted bushes as well as other features - but lost out on a statue of St Francis of Assisi.

Garden Invaders, which is made by Bazal Productions, is due to start on May 22.

e-mail: lesley.tate@lancashire.newsquest.co.uk

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.