MOST of us like to present our front gardens with a nice border of flowers and an immaculate patch of lawn.

Such thinking doesn’t hold sway with Andy Walker, who has adorned his garden in Latchingdon with a Wizard of Oz-esque pair of ruby slippers.

Mr Walker, a scrap merchant who moved to his Cold Norton Road home nearly three years ago, discovered the shoes at a scrap factory awaiting to be destroyed.

They now regularly attract bemused looks from passers-by Andy said his wife has always been obsessed with shoes.

He said: “Like many others today my wife has a ridiculous obsession with shoes, buying more and more each year, and has always said to me that she’d love a pair of high heels in the style of Dorothy’s from The Wizard of Oz.

“Being a scrap merchant, I was one day walking around a scrap factory when I spotted these huge red, high-heeled shoes on top of a shelf, and I thought to myself, if these can’t satisfy an obsession with shoes, I don’t know what can. After they’d been placed down we had several people walking by just looking and taking photos, which isn’t very surprising.

“It’s not something you’ll see every day in a quiet neighbourhood.”

Andy moved to Latchingdon from Brentwood in 2014.

The big red shoes are the first in a planned line of different themes to add to his garden, changing them every few months.

He added: “This is something that just happened out of the blue and I didn’t really plan on it, but now that it’s built up a bit of popularity I might carry it on and bring in different things to display every couple of months, depending on what I can find.”