Poor old heathers, they've really got themselves a bad name through the inevitable company they keep. Eternally associated with dwarf conifers, the pair of them turn up everywhere like an old married couple who finish each other's sentences constantly, compulsively and tediously.
Let them get divorced, I say. And let the heathers take on new partners: full-grown conifers - their natural match - or let them go it alone so their innate qualities shine out, released from the shadow of their strait-laced mates. (The jilted dwarf conifers, meanwhile, will find themselves eminently suited to life in an alpine setting, providing much-needed backbone among the little gems.)
Even when heathers have been disunited from their long-time conifer partners, they are often short-changed by their easy-going nature. It's true, heathers require very little maintenance, but some gardeners take this to mean no maintenance: as soon as the plants are stuffed into the ground they are forever ignored, growing more mean and straggly as the seasons go by.
Give your heathers an airy and sunny position - remember their native habitat is the wide open spaces of moors and mountainsides. Don't plant just one or two: be generous, plant them in masses, as nature intended. And be solicitous of their hair-thin roots which don't have enough oomph to travel through compacted soil or thick clay.
Heavy clay and loam must be lightened by digging in grit, and almost all soils will benefit by having loads of organic matter added: well-rotted garden compost, leafmould, composted bark or peat. The latter is not necessary though: not all heathers require acid conditions. There are plenty of lime-tolerant ones, including all winter-flowering varieties. Trim heathers annually with a shears or secateurs - usually after flowering - and they'll remain fresh as a daisy for many years.
The freshest, healthiest heathers I've ever seen are at Doran Nurseries in Co Kildare where Larry and Mary Doran and a full-time staff of 10 grow 140 varieties. On the 11 acre site - a "medium-sized nursery", according to Mary - there are seven acres of heathers growing in 36 tunnels, in a large glasshouse, in a four-bay "multi-span" (a quarter-acre structure as big as a railway station) and in the open air. This is heather city where each year 750,000 new plants are started in cell-trays. In the glasshouse alone there are currently 300,000 cuttings in hundreds of trays - 273 teeny, fiddly, slow-growing bits of heather per tray.
Gardening books sometimes refer to the limited range of flower-tone in heathers, but to me it seems there are not enough names of colours at the pink, purple and red end of the spectrum to describe the sometimes-gentle, sometimes-shocking grains of blossom that decorate the closepacked flower spikes. The little lamps of spirited colour seem to have an internal glow that is perfectly in tune with our often-overcast Irish skies.
At Doran Nurseries, not only are the polytunnels alight with thousands of heathers in flower, they are also brightened by an opulent patchwork of young foliage. The pots of youthful plants and trays of infant cuttings are arranged by variety in neat blocks, like miniature fields. They're the colours of the bog - dusky green, blue green, orangey red - and that vibrant gold-green that you see when the sun comes out on a wet field in early summer.
Calluna vulgaris `Firefly' catches my eye, its poisonous green leaves suffused with orange and red at the tips. It's fiery, it's volcanic - but it won't survive in limey soil unless it's lathered with peat. Erica carnea `Foxhollow', however, which is yellow tipped with bronze, will grow unassisted in alkaline soil - and it turns russet in cold weather. What's more, it produces pale lavender flowers from January to April.
The winter-flowering varieties are cultivars of Erica carnea, E. x darleyensis and E. erigena, and as mentioned earlier, they don't mind a bit of lime. Newish varieties (to this country anyway) include the white-flowered E. carnea `Isabell', the white-flowered and bright-green-foliaged `Ice Princess' and the cherry pink `Rosalie'.
Look out too for the vigorous E. x darleyensis `Kramer's Red' and the profusely-blooming `White Perfection': both have been awarded the RHS Award of Garden Merit which means they're sturdy, ornamental and not too fussy. Or to put it another way, in the words of Larry Doran, "Anything that gives you a heap of flowers in the winter-time is bloody great."
National Heather Week runs from today until September 13th, and many garden centres will be promoting the plants during this period.
Diary dates: The Hardy Plant Nursery, Ridge House, Ballybrack, Co Dublin specialises in unusual herbaceous perennials and cottage garden plants. Plant sales are generally by mail order, but today and each Saturday until October 31st it is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Send a s.a.e for a catalogue. Telephone 01-2826973.