Here we are with a new century still at the fragile seedling stage and none of us knowing what it will grow into. Nonetheless, predicting is rife, and forecasts are piling up right, left and centre. Gardening is no exception: grasses, for instance, are the plant of the future - or of the past, depending on who you're listening to; galvanised planters are the next Big Thing - or have been left behind by copper containers; herbaceous plants are at the vanguard of fashion - or are finally consigned to the compost heap.
All this ricocheting back and forth between past and future has my head in a crazy ping-pong spin. So instead of blithely foretelling what tomorrow will bring, I thought it would be more useful to pause and see where we are now - and then where we might go from here.
One thing is certain, the domestic garden is now an integral part of the home: a valuable outdoor living space. To borrow a line from Dutch designer, Romke van de Kaa, Hoovers for gardens prove that gardens have become another room, an extension of the house. Perhaps because they are now seen as extensions - and increasingly tinier ones - gardens are at last beginning to match the style of the houses they adjoin.
Contemporary architecture will dictate what will happen in gardens, suggests designer Karl Barnes of Formality, in Dun Laoghaire. "I imagine that things will get far less fussy, more stripped down," he says. "The old brick and railway sleeper idea is dying. There will still be natural stone, but it will no longer be used in a rustic or random manner. We'll be seeing geometric, regular slabs with a smooth-finished texture."
Steel and concrete will be more popular, he guesses, while dividers and "pergolas made of steel and wood, or steel and tensioned wire, will suit certain gardens better than woody trellis and timber pergolas". Glass, that other much-talked-of modern material, "will have some uses".
Peter Stam, chairman of the Garden and Landscape Designers Association, doesn't think we will be encountering much glass or steel in Irish gardens in the immediate future, as things are slow to change here. Instead, we may be seeing "more interesting paving materials and decking" for the next couple of years.
As time goes on, he surmises, there may be a backlash against the minuscule gardens that builders tag on to new houses: "In 10 or 15 years people may insist on bigger gardens." In the meantime, "because gardens are so undersized, the experience has to be more intense." This might include the use of computer-controlled devices that produce clouds of mist (as seen at Chaumont garden festival last year in France), or special light-effects, or atmospheric sounds. (The latter, incidentally, was planned for Strokestown Gardens in Roscommon some years ago, but has yet to be installed.)
Now that the survival of many households depends on a double income, time for gardening is limited, but that outdoor room still has to look good. "There could be one sculpted tree - like a cloud-pruned maple - and maybe a few pots that can be moved around," says Peter Stam. Conifers will make a return, he opines, but not the squat, dumpy dwarves, that, along with heathers, invaded this land in decades gone by. Instead, more finely-shaped types will add a graceful note to the garden, with the more statuesque ones acting as vertical screens - along with bamboos and other stately evergreens.
Flowers, says Karl Barnes, are no longer the most important element in a plant (although British designer Stephen Woodhams confides that red flowers are "going to be all over the place", along with grey, silver and other metallic foliage, grasses and box). "Structure, form and texture", according to Barnes, are more likely to interest his clientele now, who opt for bamboos, topiary, spiky things like agave and yucca, and "big, outsized plants - they look fantastic in a small garden."
But while large, architectural specimens are de rigueur among design-conscious types, plant breeders are introducing smaller and smaller varieties of certain plants, such as the vertically-challenged foxgloves and verbascums that are so prevalent now. A new compact shrubby mallow, according to Tim Leahy, of T & M Leahy Nursery in Piltown, will be available next summer. Lavatera `Memories' grows to just one metre and has pale pink buds opening to perfect pink-eyed white cups.
Mary Leahy, also of T & M Leahy, notices that discerning gardeners are buying more green plants, instead of the golden-foliaged ones that were favourites in past years. In England, though, Dirk van der Werff, of Plants magazine, claims that golden plants are still highly desirable and a "new golden erysimum, now on trial in the UK and Europe, will be all over the place in 2001 and 2002.". Variegated plants, says van der Werff, remain "big business, as they stop people in their tracks" and are "a mustbuy impulse plant, which is why all the big wholesalers are going bananas on anything new."
Likely to drive wholesalers bananas in the near future are two new variegated shrubs: Pittosporum `Mellow Yellow' (with gold-centred small leaves) and Abelia `Sunrise' (with two-tone green-centred leaves edged with yellow, and red-flushed new shoots). The latter plant arose in a nursery in North Carolina and will be available in some garden centres here this autumn.
Of course, every year brings "new" plants, many of which are remarkably similar to old plants: often just a slight difference in tone, shape or flowering period is all that makes them different. Perhaps the greatest change in gardening is that we're all talking a lot more about it: on television, in the reams of new gardening magazines and on the Internet. We've less time to garden, but more time to gas about it - which is why I, for one, am going to stop right here.
Jane Powers can be contacted at: jpowers@irish-times.ie