AN elderly female motorist and a gardener are lucky to be alive after the woman's car careered through a fence landing where the man had been working just minutes earlier.

The car, a silver Toyota Aygo, flipped onto its roof trapping the woman upside down by her seatbelt in the vehicle, which came to rest in the garden of a large, detached home in Constable Road, Ben Rhydding, Ilkley, shortly after 10am on Tuesday.

Gardeners from Morritt Landscape and Garden were working in the garden, including 70-year-old Norman Morritt.

He said: "Just ten minutes before and I would have been under that car. I am lucky to be alive.

"I was working on the banking pulling weeds out and I had just got to the end of the border. There was such a bang and I thought 'what has happened' and turned around."

Home owner Pam Brown, 70, was asked to call for an ambulance.

She said: "I came out and saw the car upside down.

"It is the first time I've had a car in the garden and hopefully the last!"

The woman was taken to hospital with minor injuries.