Call me old-fashioned - or thick - but whatever happened to plants with plain green leaves? It seems to me breeders and growers are falling over themselves to manufacture plants in all the colours of the rainbow - and lots of others besides (black, brown and mottled-mud to mention a few).
As it happens, I'm all in favour of the odd dab of non-green vegetation to jazz things up, but the garden that is heavily furnished with multicoloured foliage makes me dizzy. We need green as a counterpoint to flower-colour, and to relax the eyes and brain. (Just imagine the chaos that would result in the clubhouse if golfers played on red turf.)
Obviously I'm in a minority, because at the recent Kildare Growers Trade Show, of the 34 candidates for the "Best New Plant" prize, less than 50 per cent had unadorned, everyday, green leaves. Some were wearing their Sunday best, like the deep, rich maroon Lysimachia `Firecracker' (which has yellow flowers) and the flashy wine-and-green Heuchera `Ring of Fire', both on display at Flip Schram's stand.
Others were in more sombre, funereal attire like the near-black Physocarpus `Diabolo' from Rentes Plants and the dignified Heuc hera `Plum Pudding', another member of the Schram fold. (Incidentally, for those who wish to keep abreast of horticultural fashions, heucheras and their near-relatives, heucherellas, are guaranteed super-chic plants.) So, from my observations at this two-day horticultural jamboree - where many retailers will be choosing their key stock for next season - it looks like non-green plants will be gaining a strong foothold on garden centre shelves. We should welcome them because we all love a bit of unexpected colour. But, when choosing from their legions, it might help to think of the garden as a outfit of clothing and exercise restraint. Coloured-foliage plants, be they variegated, red, bronze or golden, are best used as clever accessories, rather than the main garment. Just in case you're curious, the winner of the "Best New Plant" class was Phygelius `Winchester Fanfare' from Amour Nurseries, a reliable, dark-green-leaved perennial, with slim burnt-orange tubular bells, yellow-washed inside. Like most of the other "new" plants, it has been around for years, and will be known to keen gardeners, but it will be new to the general public.
Genuinely new to Ireland are several roses, among them the gently-scented, white-flowered `Princess Diana' (which, not surprisingly, sold out in England last year), bred by Harkness and wholesaled here by Minaun Nurseries. A floribunda with glossy foliage, it should flower from June to November, giving good value if you've room for only one or two roses. Also for the smaller garden, Slatterys of Cahir have three new patio roses: the rich yellow `House Beautiful', the scarlet `Hand in Hand' and the self-descriptive `Sparkling White'.
But let's get down to the nuts and bolts of gardening - the "dry goods", as they are called in the trade. Driest among these is a product called Snail Ban, a non-toxic powder which, when laid down as a three inch barrier around plants, is supposed to deter snails and slugs. It is so dessicating that molluscs are loathe to put their big slimy feet anywhere near it, or so the brochure claims. It is made from a "rock mined in Australia", and my only reservation - aside from the price (about £6 for two kilos), and whether it actually works - is whether some precious piece of Down Under is being carved out for us gardeners. Something that definitely does deter these gelatinous critters is electric shock treatment. Fruit Hill Farm, a Bantry-based organic supplier, sells a battery-operated "slug fence". It is neither cheap nor particularly long (£22 plus VAT for five metres), but it could be the answer to protecting valuable seedlings and other small crops from being munched to death. Fruit Hill Farm also has some of the loveliest stainless steel garden tools I've seen, hand-forged by a small company in the Netherlands. Again, they're pricey (a trowel costs £14.90 plus VAT), but they are nicely made and look durable.
My personal award for the "Most Esoteric Product" goes to Bio-Cara for its Plocher Energy System, a procedure where vibratory energy - carried in calcium carbonate - is used to boost plant growth, or revitalise stagnant water, or process manure and slurry. According to the stand executive, who used to be a journalist with the Bavarian national radio station, it is approved by our Department of Agriculture, so there must be something in it.
But, back to plants, for isn't that what gardening is all about? The best-named had to be Peter Stam's pair of sculpted "Poodle Pines". A Pinus nigra nigra and a Pinus strobus, their branches are carefully trimmed into pads (with the new growth being clipped before the longest day), like outsize, gorgeous bonsai - but well beyond the reach of the my chequebook, at £500 or £600 a head.
For me though, the best surprise of the show was being stopped short by a great waft of scent pouring from a white-trumpeted Rhododendron excellens. It was one of many plants on the Seaforde Nursery stand grown from wild seed collected in North Vietnam by Patrick Forde. And he was on hand to tell me about it, with no glossy labels, no middlemen and no colour-coded pots. Just a man and his plants. That's gardening.