Driving along the A65 heading towards the Lake District, this place can stop you in your tracks. Usually it's the profusion of busy lizzies, begonias and geraniums which does it – although the motorist who was brought to the most spectacular halt here was not looking at the flowers.

Even under cloudy skies, this is a corner of Yorkshire that's always brightly blooming through some of the 6,000 plants arrayed in different combinations.

Anne Strange and her husband Robin have lived here at Katy's Well for 38 years and began with modest floral ambitions 24 years ago. "To begin with," says
Anne, "we had just three baskets of fuchsias. And every year since it's just
got bigger."

Seeing displays of hanging baskets in York was the spur. However, when Anne and Robin began holidaying in Switzerland, the begonia bug was well and truly caught. "We go to the Bernese Oberland every summer for a fortnight's walking," Anne explains, "and we were really taken by all the houses with their lovely floral displays."

Many passers-by refer to Katy's Well as the "Swiss Flower House" – Anne receives letters of appreciation using this address – because the Stranges fly a Swiss flag above their blooms. The fascination with Switzerland derives from Robin's history as a climber.

"We love the mountains," says Anne. "My husband did a lot of climbing in his youth. He still goes ice climbing in the French Alps in January. He put the first route up Malham Cove as a youngster – he was a dedicated climber and I have always liked the outdoors."

Other flags that are flown include the cross of Saint George, the flag of the Bernese Oberland region and, appropriately in among all the flowers, the Yorkshire white rose. The Stranges discovered that Swiss National Day and Yorkshire Day are both on August 1.

Robin's climbing skills come in handy when the two-week process of planting out begins each late spring, often involving the use of ladders. "And if you stand on the roof of the house," says Anne, "you can see Malham Cove – it's five miles as the crow flies." In fact, because of living on a busy road and for the sake of better views, Anne and Robin have their impressive living room upstairs, with triple glazing helping to deaden the sound of passing traffic.

The A65 has brought its problems as the volume of traffic increases. "I used to push the pram along the side of the road when the children were small; you couldn't do that now," says Anne.

One particular date stands out for the Strange family: August 15, 2001. "We had a major accident," explains Anne. "A 16-year-old had taken his father's brand new Audi without him knowing and took his friends out for a spin. He saw a police car in the road, did a U-turn and the police started chasing him.

"He crashed the car into the side of the house at 4am. Our bedrooms were downstairs – the car ended up about three feet from my bed. It was like a nightmare. I heard an enormous noise and things were falling everywhere. Through a hole in the wall I could see blue police lights flashing." The Stranges' daughter was upstairs at the time and since the crash had destroyed the staircase, she had to be rescued through an upstairs window. The car had been travelling at 80mph at the time of the impact and it hit the house two feet above the road level. Miraculously nobody was killed or badly injured, but it cost £85,000 to repair the damage.

They now have wing mirrors on the front walls to monitor passing traffic
and callers.

When Robin and Anne first saw their house advertised back in 1970, it had one cold water tap and an earth closet. "We bought it for £875," says Anne, who retired last year from her job as a radiographer. "We had a lot of work to do on it, and it was January 1972 before we could move in." The couple received £1,000 from the council to renovate the property and they had to match the sum themselves. "We did the bare essentials at that stage because we had a baby and another on the way. Then in the early 1990s we came into a bit of money when my parents died, so we decided to do some more work on the house. We
moved the lounge upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs."

Anne is fascinated by the history of the house. "One of my retirement projects is to find out more. There's evidence that the house was once a Dame School." The house was empty when the Stranges bought it and had belonged, along with many other buildings in the area, to the Bannister family who owned the Coniston Estate. The estate was run by a local character known as Colonel Totty.

"Apparently he wouldn't allow electricity into the village until the late 1950s," says Anne. "People lived here on a peppercorn rent – and then, when they put the rents up, a lot of the properties became vacant." Anne estimates the house must be about 200 years old. She decided to call the house Katy's Well after finding reference to a nearby well of that name
on an old map.

Displaying six thousand plants on the walls of a house demands thorough preparation and a seasonal routine that is still being modified and improved. "It starts in January," says Anne, "with seeds that are planted out in the greenhouse and we wait for them to grow."

In March and April, the small plants start arriving. "This year we ordered about 2,000 Busy Lizzies and they each have to go into their own pot – which keeps Robin rather busy!" laughs Anne. Every one of the plants adorning the house is transplanted by hand, and then put into bigger pots when they have grown. The next stage is to put them all into the containers and baskets outside.

There's no set day of the year when the plants first go out – it's entirely dependent on the weather. Local people and passers-by start inquiring from the beginning of May onwards when the flowers will be
on show but it tends to be towards the end of May, or even the beginning of
June, before the plants are ready for the great outdoors.

Come October the plants that can over-winter are brought back inside. The remaining plants are composted, leaving several thousand pots in need of washing in preparation for the following year. Watering is never a problem at Katy's Well. As Anne explains: "The plants are all on automatic watering otherwise it would be an endless job. The system can be programmed to turn on and off at
certain times – and different flowers
need different amounts of water. A lot of it is pot luck, so to speak – and they certainly haven't needed much extra water this year."

Anne and Robin love decorating their house in this distinctive manner purely for their own satisfaction, but it is also clear that they enjoy giving pleasure to everyone who becomes aware of Katy's Well. "People are really appreciative," says Anne. "One gentleman bought us a bottle of Champagne. We get gift vouchers and Christmas cards from people who have driven past the house.

"We keep all the letters. It's nice to know that the flowers bring so much pleasure and we really do appreciate people writing to us. It amuses us that we even seem to have become part of the itinerary of coach trips; they all slow down and take photographs.

"Mind you, we also have people thinking we are a flower shop and coming to the door trying to buy flowers – and they're not for sale."

Can the annual glory of Katy's Well continue indefinitely? The couple's
son, Jonathan, who works alongside
Robin in their own business, Treetops Forestry, is unlikely to keep up the tradition when it gets too much for
his parents.

Expense also comes into it – "we daren't add it up," admits Anne, smiling. "Anyway, it's a good few years off – but if we stop doing it, it will come down to health or poverty."