KEEN gardeners Harold and Jean Dyson have cultivated success in a national competition.

The couple, right, beat off thousands of entries to win top prize in a contest run by a best-selling home style magazine.

Now the March issue of House Beautiful has devoted three pages of glossy photographs to their garden at Harrison Crescent, Blackrod.

In the feature, Harold tells how he transformed the traditional suburban plot into an organic paradise of flowers and vegetables.

The self-employed joiner believes the secret of his success is good manure, which he gets from a local farm in return for odd jobs. The Bolton couple, who once ran a small-holding in Scotland, are great believers in home grown food and won the kitchen garden category of the competition.

Harold, aged 54, who originates from Kearsley, said: "I have been interested in gardening for as long as I can remember.

"My father was a gardener but he died three months before I was born.

"It was a struggle for my mother, so I started growing vegetables to help make ends meet."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.