Access here is terrible like everything else

Access here is terrible, like everything else."But heartened by what's been happening on Fernhill, Carol joined Gurnos residents' association. Living in a "concrete bunker" made it almost impossible for her to get her husband into an ambulance two months ago for hospital treatment for a blood clot in the leg."The ambulance couldn't get close," she explains. "It took four men, including paramedics, two hours to carry him out. Suddenly, Fernhill became a place of pilgrimage for other embattled housing estate residents from nearby Merthyr Valley and farther afield. Now Merthyr's notorious New Gurnos estate - riddled with unemployment and petty crime - plans to follow Fernhill's example.Carol Davies, a 35-year-old mother of four, lives next door to a fire- gutted house on Heather Road, Gurnos (flower names for streets run riot here where none grow).

Then the women started painting their houses to match their neat gardens.Forbidding concrete underpasses - virtual no-go areas - were decked out with environmental themes: Groundwork's landscape architect Joanne Gosage drew bold outlines for toddlers, teenagers, mums, dads and pensioners to fill in with bright colours. He offered to help the two older men "and so help myself by having something to do". Gradually, other residents on different pockets of the estate got the gardening bug. Sharon Davies, Pat Beasley and neighbours reclaimed tiny front gardens, swapping cuttings "London Pride's big here," says Pat. He made it clear that anybody spoiling the gardens wouldn't be allowed to join in the fun."Tyrone Sandhu, 26 and unemployed, lives alone on Fernhill. "We didn't want to take over: he'd been so successful, largely because his whole scheme originated on the estate rather than being imposed by some outside agency."We were amazed how he'd won people over, hiring bouncy castles for smaller children and organising barbecues for others. "We heard what Cyril was doing and wanted to see if we could help with plants or tools," says Antonina Byatt, the trust's project officer for housing estates.

Yet he spent heavily from his state benefits of pounds 102 a week, transforming a barren corner the size of a football pitch.Then Mike stunned neighbours by ordering a mower, costing pounds 300, from a shopping catalogue - paying weekly - so communal grass areas could be kept neat.Talk of their green-fingered evangelism reached the Merthyr and Cynon Groundwork Trust, offshoot of a national charity with 10 years' spadework in the area to its credit. He also has emphysema but neither seemed a reason for giving up on Fernhill. Similarly, Mike, recovering from a heart attack, refused to relinquish their dreams for the place - images of pergolas mantled in wistaria (which back then they only knew as the "purple stuff") and festooned with sweet-smelling white roses."I didn't have a clue about gardening to begin with," Cyril confesses. When I went down the community centre to tell a meeting of 300 how we could all live in a better environment, I got called a Communist."After working from the age of 15 in pits such as Deep Duffryn and Nantgarw collieries - now no more - Cyril is marked by the grey pallor of many sufferers from "dust disease", or silicosis. "We'd plant things only to find next morning most of what we'd done had been destroyed But we didn't give up. Every time we started again."And we had to educate a lot of people - postmen and milkmen as well - who'd walk across flowerbeds rather than use paths we'd made.

I couldn't stand the way things looked any longer and so I started to clear the place up."His neighbour Mike John, a family man in his fifties, offered to help. "We cleared the junk and then went up on the mountain for dead timber to fence in the gardens," says Cyril. "By cutting lawns on a private estate, Sierra Pines, we got some money to pay for a few shrubs and we started planting."Thus the greening of Fernhill happened against all odds, not least a hostile reception from local residents. It was like a refuse tip with old beds, burnt-out cars, dirty nappies - syringes, too - strewn all round. We'd have left, like, only we couldn't abandon the wife's elderly parents living down the road We were stuck."There have been murders here and everything. After an arson attack on the Post Office, a Pakistani family running it left rather than risk being firebombed again. And each time they were hacked down, he started again."I was determined not to give up," he says.

"Mind you, I can't count the trees I lost - apple, pears, cherry, almond - at the start."The state of things here was dreadful. When hooligans tore them up or trampled them, he planted more He planted trees, too. Three years ago, after declaring war on vandalism, burglaries and muggings in Fernhill, Cyril decided to plant as many flowers as he could get his hands on. So much so that Fernhill, in the Cynon Valley, has become a model for other concrete wastelands around Britain. Cyril's tiny council house looks out over 500 similar barrack-like structures on the estate, where 85 per cent of residents, most of whom are unemployed, receive housing benefit.