For years they have been regarded as some of the less tasteful ornaments gracing British lawns. But the garden gnome seems to have made an unexpected comeback in recent weeks – with some very modern makeovers. The traditional male bearded figurines with red pointy hats and fishing rods have seen a resurrection this Easter in the form of hipsters, zombies and female, selfie-taking gnomes. Fanatics can now purchase an ‘iGnome’, which reads from an electronic tablet, a ‘nudist dwarf flasher gnome’ and even those inspired by TV series such as ‘Game of Thrones’. Online sales of the miniature figurines have rocketed by 42 percent in the last fortnight, with auction website eBay reported to have sold more than 20 gnomes a day over the two weeks. Meanwhile, Asda said it has already sold 92,000 gnomes this year – a 21 percent rise from previous years. The staggering boom in interest even led the supermarket to hold a customer vote on new designs for its range – with gnome nurses, princesses, superheroes and firemen crowned the winners. The remarkable – and largely unexplained – comeback follows a notable slump in the popularity of gnomes over the last decade. Last year it was reported that sales of the figurines halved in the last ten years, with as little as ‘5m left in captivity in Great Britain’. At the Chelsea Flower Show in 2006, garden gnomes were described as “hideous” by gardening expert and Oxford academic Robin Lane Fox. “There’s no way we want mass-produced gnomes or toadstools,” he said at the time. The turnaround in sales of the ornament figurines may have been partly inspired by popular films ‘Gnomeo & Juliet’ in 2011 and ‘Gnome Alone’ in 2015. It may also have been boosted by celebrity gnome-lovers, such as singer Dolly Parton and TV presenters Bill Oddie and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, who even launched his own range of garden guardians in 2008. Despite the rocketing in sales, even the new gnomes remain controversial. Last week a gang broke into a miniature railway park in Warwickshire, Echills Wood, and used hammers to decapitate about 60 gnome-like ornaments which had been donated by locals.