One of the great pleasures in gardening is becoming familiar with plants. In my view, plants are like people: I'm more comfortable around them when I can put a name on them, know their habits and know what to expect from them. Consequently, going into a garden where I don't recognise any of its occupants can be a disconcerting experience - a bit like walking into a party where you don't know a soul.
Well, Anna Nolan is an incorrigible collector of plants, and her garden - awash with rare and unusual specimens - is at first a pretty unnerving place. On a recent visit there, after some uneasy minutes surrounded by a sea of unfamiliar floral faces, I was relieved to find the welcome shapes of a few old faithfuls emerging from the crowd: the hot red Crocosmia `Lucifer', a shaggy Shasta daisy and the complicated, pink policeman's helmet - alias Impatiens glandulifera. This latter, leggy plant, which originated in the Himalayas, is a vigorous coloniser of river banks in this country, and is renowned for its method of spreading its seed: when ripe, it fires it off at great velocity - sometimes to a distance of more than 30 foot.
Which is half the length of Anna Nolan's back garden, where much else of what she grows is utterly alien to me - but, as it happens, getting to know these strangers proves to be just as invigorating as meeting a new and interesting person at a party. For instance, although already acquainted with the tall, airy, back-of-border meadow rues, I was charmed to meet their miniature cousin, Thalictrum kiusianum, manfully bearing its teeny, fluff-balled flowerheads a scant inch or two above the ground. And hostas: we all know and love the big, quilted slug-food varieties such as `Frances Williams' and `Elegans', but in Anna's garden there are also diminutive ones such as `Saishu Jima' - mere appetisers for the hungry mollusc. Astilbes, with their feathery cream and sugar-pink plumes, are here in their full-size versions, but so too is a doll's house one, Astilbe `Saxosa', raising its spires a finger's-length into the air.
A pattern seems to be emerging here: "Yes, I like the bigs and the littles," admits Anna, who also grows trilliums "from thumb-nail size to several feet", major and minor epimediums and silver astelias, both maxi and mini. Many of the smaller plants are lodged in make-believe or "hypertufa" stone troughs fashioned from old sinks ("you just slap the stuff on . . .") or in rockeries, also created by this incurable plant collector.
But all this great and small vegetation is not tumbled together in just any old way. Anna takes great pains to get it perfect: "I read up on every plant to see if it likes sun or shade and what else it needs - and then I go by colour," she explains. Colour has always been important to her: "From the time when I first started gardening, I knew what colours I wanted, where." Accordingly, the borders that sweep around her green lagoon of a lawn (its flowing curves were shaped by laying out a sinuous form with a garden hose) make up an artful and composed picture. Reds, such as those of Crocosmia `Lucifer' and a host of lobelias, including `Queen Victoria', `Dark Crusader' and the long-flowering species Lobelia tupa are cooled down by masses of green foliage, and are never planted in the sun, as its glare makes them too harsh for this refined garden.
In a long border next to a patio built by Anna, gentle pinks, purples, whites and mauves cluster together in a mannerly fashion. The taller plants - Thalictrum, Romneya (the Californian poppy named after Dr Thomas Romney Robinson, an Irish astronomer) and Galega or goat's rue - make an immediate impact on the eye, while the smaller treasures woven in a tapestry at their feet demand more concentrated admiration. Meanwhile, in another border, yellow and orange flowers - among them one of Anna's favourites, Isoplexis canariensis, a posh relative of the foxglove - are relieved by bronze-leaved plants, such as Heuchera `Palace Purple'.
The garden is given structure by various well-chosen trees and shrubs: a Trachycarpus or Chusan palm, a bronze cordyline and `Crimson King', a bronze maple. "I use them as full stops and commas between colours." (Every gardener starting off, she says, should plant a framework of trees and shrubs, and bronze foliage will go with anything, unlike yellow.) But, good structure, clever colours and enviable plants aside, one of the most compelling things about Anna's garden is that it is just an ordinary-sized plot, and thus a garden anyone could aspire to. That is, as long as they spend every waking hour in it, have considerable construction skills, an unfailing eye for colour and an insatiable appetite for new plants.
Anna Nolan's garden, at 12 Shanganagh Vale, Cabinteely is open next weekend, August 8th and 9th, 2-4 p.m. Admission £2 in aid of St Vincent de Paul Society.
Diary Date: South County Horticultural Society: Celebrating Dun Laoghaire 1500 Summer Show, Saturday, August 8th, 2.30- 7 p.m. and Sunday, August 9th, 1 a.m-5.30 p.m. at the Carlisle Pier, Dun Laoghaire. Admission: £3.