A GREAT Harwood couple who got the surprise of their life -- and garden of their dreams -- last summer will be reliving the experience through their TV set tonight.

Carol Bennett and Bernard O'Brien went to Clitheroe for a caravan break last summer and returned to find their garden had been Ground Forced by the BBC's crack team.

The team was alerted to the garden dilemma by the neighbour's children Kathryn, 19, and 11-year-old Edward Speak. Armed with an array of equipment, detailed plans and an awful lot of turf, Alan Titchmarsh, Charlie Dimmock, Tommy Walsh and his assistant Willie Shanahan swooped into Hesketh Court, to give the garden --described by handyman Tommy as a "bomb-site" -- a massive makeover which took 40-year-old Carol and Bernard, 43, completely by surprise.

Tonight the couple will be able to sit back and relax as they watch the amount of effort that went into creating their brand new garden. And they had better get used to being the centre of attention as the happy couple are due to wed next month.

Carol and Bernard moved into the new housing estate in February 2000 but just "never got round" to fixing the garden.

But Kathryn soon stepped in to help and wrote to the show's producers to request their magic touch.

She said: "All the gardens were in a mess and I thought it would be a nice surprise. I wrote off the previous year but didn't expect to anything to come of it."

Crew members were impressed with the letter and arranged a series of cloak and dagger secret rendezvous including getting Kathryn to discreetly take photo of the garden leaning out of her bedroom window.

Ground Force, BBC1, 8.30pm.