The plethora of TV garden improvement programmes have been blamed for a new kind of beach-comber: one who rakes up pebbles by the tractor-load for his water feature.

Now police are being called in to stop the pebble pilfering from Chesil Bank in Dorset before the area’s natural sea defences are compromised.

The 18-mile long bank contains an estimated 100 million tons of pebbles, but now DIY gardeners are removing hundreds of tons a year with sacks, wheelbarrows and even trailers drawn by tractors.