Green-fingered residents have been advised by crime prevention officers to pack in their decorative flowers and start investing in defensive shrubbery bristling with spines or poison to keep unwanted visitors at bay.

Calderdale's towns and villages are renowned for their picturesque scenery, and regularly win Yorkshire in Bloom awards.

But with fearsome stingers like pyracantha, rosa rugosa and the thorny gorse bush ulex europaeus being promoted, flower displays could be a thing of the past.

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "Most intruders will approach houses by climbing over garden walls and fences, jumping on to your flower beds before making their way in.

"The garden wall or fence should be the starting point of your security strategy.

"In this area of your garden, instead of planting flowers, have a look at what we refer to as defensive shrubbery.

"Jump into that lot and you will need more than a dock leaf to rub it better".

"While these shrubs are unpleasant and painful to touch," he said "they will in most cases display a variety of colours."