When at his Avoca cottage, former Eason chairman Harold Clarke can mostly be found tying up bulbs or clearing undergrowth in the three-acre Japanese garden he created after taking early retirement in 1995. The garden at Knocknaree is modelled on a Japanese garden in Kilquade, but Harold's version is much more interesting. Typically, there is a surprise around every corner.

"I've a great belief you musn't see everything in a garden. It is original and took about a year's digging by hand," Harold says of his creation. Three stone elephants are almost hidden by a willow tree on the edge of a stream. Harold bought these on a trip to India and shipped them back together with a consignment of Ganesh figures More than a thousand newly-planted trees including cherry, beech, alder, sycamore, ash and oak are beginning to bud.

It's hard to believe, looking at the fresh-faced former executive and man-about-town, that he will be 70 next November. The entry in Who's Who records him as a noted bridge player with a keen interest in drama, books, architecture, travel and the visual arts. No mention of gardening, but that came later.

Harold has trekked in the Andes and Nepal, edited and published books on Irish heritage and notably restored a listed Georgian house on Dublin's North Great Georges Street. He regularly hosts charity musical events in a concert hall/guest cottage which was converted from a cow byre, with the assistance of architect Anthony Brabazon.

He refers to himself as "yesterday's man", yet evidently enjoys life more now than when he was chief mover and shaker in the Irish book market. As a member of the board of Eason, Harold still travels to Dublin once a week for meetings, and maintains an apartment in Blackrock.

Knocknaree in Avoca is where he feels most at home. "I thought I'd shaken the dust of the country off my feet when I came up to school in Dublin. Yet it is amazing how happy I am in my little cottage. I was looking for somewhere with a crop of roses over the door and a brook." (It's always "brook" in Wicklow he says, displaying his local savvy.) "This was the 40th house I had looked at in Wicklow."

Builders are extending the original house so Harold has moved temporarily into the guest cottage. Designed as a flexible space, the cottage has a central living groom with a raised open fireplace, a maple kitchen and a grand piano by the window. A bathroom and bedroom are at the opposite end of the cottage.

On occasions Harold lends the guest cottage to his favourite charities for Sunday lunchtime events. The entire interior opens up into a small concert hall, seating 65 comfortably. Specially-designed doors fold back, exposing a small, well-lit stage. The score of Thomas Moore's The Meeting of the Waters, always sung as a finale at his concerts, is propped on the grand piano.

"People come around 12.45 for a drink and a walk around the grounds, then back to the house for lunch and the concert. I pay for light and insurance and the rest is up to the others. Mezzo soprano Colette McGahon and violinist Cora Venus Lunny were very popular. One weekend Gay Byrne told funny stories and his wife

Kathleen read poetry. That was a great success, raising over £2,500 for hospices."

Harold lives two separate lives, one in the country, the other in the city. "My Dublin friends tend to regard me as locking myself away in the country, but I hardly ever eat on my own in Avoca. People ring up at four o'clock and invite me to supper.

"It is a more informal relationship, though; the friends I make are "blow-ins", mostly people who have come to live here.

"I don't exercise, but I'm busy with the garden all the time. A man comes two days a week to help and I employ a trained gardener from time to time. I could manage with less help if I could just stop creating!"

As if he could. When working full-time at Eason, Harold took time out from his chairman's role to publish a highly successful series of booklets on Ireland's heritage.

Now he has retired, but there is less time to read. "I play bridge regularly - a group of us have played together almost every week for about 40 years, and I travel for one month in the year."

With his infectious joie de vivre and passion for adventure, new horizons are always on the cards for Harold Clarke. When he sold his restored Georgian house in North Great Georges Street in 1987 and bought the Blackrock apartment, he had plans to make good quality furniture. But this idea was shelved when he bought the cottage and now most of the week is spent in the garden.

"What could be more exciting than a garden? But I'm still liable to change direction and do something completely new. I don't look back, always forward," he says.