Flower power on the balcony

After a glorious few weeks of summer, the balcony flowers in Embach are a real picture.

Back in spring, the garden centres were, as always, thronged with buyers sorting through rack after rack of nascent blooms to find just the right colours and varieties. Hours of planting, watering, feeding, dead-heading and nurturing have now paid off as a crescendo of colour cascades from many of the village homes.

Here, you can see a selection. If you are visiting Embach in the next week or two, see if you can spot where each picture was taken.

Unlike some villages, there is no single house in Embach where every visitor must photograph the display and, where every coach pauses to astound the travellers. Here, there is no one extreme example, just a large proportion of the homes blossoming with vivid colour. And there is no competition among residents to have the most exotic balcony.

Back in England, a rural village like Embach might have an annual fête where flowers, jams and cakes are entered in a local competition and judged by the local squire, vicar and bigwig. In Austria, though many have wonderful vegetable gardens, there is no battle to produce the biggest pumpkin, the reddest tomatoes and weirdest carrots. So it is up to you to decide which balcony you like most.

Austrian village festivals follow set traditions that everyone is used to and enjoys. But it would be interesting to see if the idea of a village fête would take off in Embach and what balcony flower display competition might win the prize.