Growing your own is hugely rewarding. Here are a few tips.
Ask any real gardener what their favourite plant is in their own patch, and chances are that they will all give you the same answer. I can tell you what that answer is. Okay, I don't know the species, but I bet it's a plant that they have raised themselves, from seed or by some other means of propagation. You see, plants are like children: your own are infinitely preferable to those spawned by other people. Unless, of course, you've had a hand in raising them - which is why a favourite plant might also be one that came as a just a small thing from another gardener, who had nurtured it until it had safely reached the giving-away stage.
You don't feel the same deep connection when you shell out a few euro in a garden centre for a daisy or a dahlia that has been mass-produced by an anonymous hand (or even a machine). And, I've said this before, but it's worth repeating again: often the plant that you buy in a garden centre is there because of its ease of production, its attractiveness in a pot and long shelf life, as much as for its general desirability in the garden. I'm not saying that all garden centre plants are the processed cheese of horticulture, I'm just reminding you that sometimes there are many factors, other than the gardener's pleasure, that shape the production and supply process.
When you propagate plants yourself, your choice of species and variety is multiplied a hundredfold at least, because none of the concerns of the bigger nurseries are yours. You can grow what you please, provided you can get the seed or a bit of vegetative material. Plus, there is much deep satisfaction to be had in sowing seeds, dividing rootstocks, slicing rhizomes, separating offsets, layering stems, moving suckers and striking cuttings (from hardwood, softwood, leaf, stem, root, tip and leafbud). Creating your own plants is as rewarding as making your own excellent bread or pickles. And, of course, there are always plenty of leftovers to share with other gardeners.
But making more plants from seed, or from bits of other plants is a dying art. Other than raising vegetables (which is more popular than it has been in decades), gardeners are propagating less and buying more. I'm sure it's partly the desire for instant whizz-bang that prompts this, but also, because novice gardeners are concerned that they may not be doing things at the correct time or in the correct way.
Did I say that propagating was an "art"? Well, that's a bit of an overstatement really, because, often as not, plants were (and still are) increased by someone shoving a twig into a spare bit of soil and seeing if it would "take". Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. A lot of the accepted wisdom regarding raising new plants is open to dispute - or experimentation. For instance, in theory, one should take hardwood cuttings (20-30cm lengths of pencil-thin stems, plunged two-thirds of the way into the ground) in late autumn or winter. But bright-stemmed willows and dogwoods (similar to those lining the motorways) make roots at the drop of a hat. They will root right into early summer, probably with a lesser success rate than if you'd done them at the textbook time - but that needn't bother the home gardener.
And hardy annuals, we are told on the seed packets, should be sown from March to May. But research by Mr Fothergill's seed company in Suffolk has shown that some annuals may be sown right up until the end of June, and still yield fine flushes of flowers into mid-October - and given Ireland's balmy climate, we should get a bonus week or three. Among the annuals that perform well when sown later are: echium 'Blue Bedder', calendula, Californian poppy (Eschscholzia), candytuft, poached-egg plant (Limnanthes), gypsophila and some sunflowers.
What I'm trying to say here is that while books and seed packets (and gardening columns such as this) may recommend certain times for sowing or propagating plants, such advice should be taken as a guide rather than as gospel. Often the only time you can take a cutting of something is when you're given it, which might be the "wrong" time of the year. Or if you're pruning a plant and have just snipped off the perfect material for making more of the same, it would be a shame not to try.
Creating more plants from seed, or cuttings, or by any of the other near magical ways of proliferation, is one of the very best bits of being a gardener. Try it and see.
To read more, try The Complete Book of Plant Propagation, by Deni Bown, Martin Rickard, Sue Stickland and others, published by Mitchell Beazley, £14.99, or The Royal Horticultural Society Propagating Plants, edited by Alan Toogood, published by Dorling Kindersley, £16.99