For many years my only experience of Cork was as a place that was on the way to or from Cobh, which was a pivotal town for my restless emigrant-immigrant family as we seesawed across the Atlantic every couple of years. At Cobh we were swallowed up or disgorged by a series of ships with pleasingly striped black-andred funnels. But, at Cork we were always rained on, and I grew up thinking that it was an utterly dismal and cold city, continually obfuscated by mist or grey showers.
And, sure enough, when I visited Cork last month, that old faithful rain was pelting down again. So, in an effort to understand the great wetness of the place, I got on to the people at the Met Office. They told me that in Cork city, the average annual rainfall is around 1,050 millimetres, while the airport (on somewhat higher ground) enjoys 1,200 millimetres per year. Compare this with Dublin city's measly 700 millimetres, and you'll fathom that such generous amounts of water in Cork can be acquired only by very frequent bouts of rain.
But where does it all go? Why, into the vegetation of course - which explains why, in Cork gardens, many of the plants are 50 per cent more plump than their Dublin cousins. And an extra degree or two of mildness during the winter months ensures that not only do Cork plants keep growing nearly all year, but certain varieties on the border-line of tenderness waltz right through the near-balmy winters.
Over the next week, nine Cork gardens throw open their gates at specific times to raise funds for the city's Marymount Hospice. The open week is the brainchild of Brian Cross, a prime mover and shaker in Cork gardening circles. Brian's own garden, Lakemount in Glanmire, was started in 1953 by his mother Peggy, a great gardener and witty woman, who last year lost the battle with cancer. She carved the garden out of land that used to be a poultry farm, and unbelievably, one of its most phenomenal features, the swooping, smooth lawn, was once a rough field. Now mown and weeded into orderly submission and every blade taut with good Cork rain, it flows softly behind the house like a pool of green custard.
For years now, Brian has been the custodian of the garden, and he has developed it in a brave and flamboyant manner. There are no shrinking violets here, but thousands of bold and proud plants in the borders surrounding the lawn and in the numerous tableau-like niches concealed around the acreage. There are eye-catching, highly-designed pictures everywhere: vast curvaceous ceramic jars are set off by spiky phormiums and ornamental grasses, and rivers of hot colour - provided by crimson, orange and yellow azaleas - course through the space. Brian is a keen plant collector, and you can see all the latest introductions here next Thursday (between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.) - as well as old favourites like tree ferns, magnolias and the paper-white `Trinity College' silver birch .
The thing about certain kinds of gardeners, especially when they have a lust for plants and an eye for design, is that they are not content to stay put in their own patches, and they soon start branching out into other people's gardens. Well, Brian Cross is such a person, and he has had a hand in the gardens of many of Cork's leading citizens.
Take the case of Margaret Barry, for instance, wife of Peter Barry (he of cups of tea and golden moments): her Blackrock Road garden (open 10.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. next Tuesday) was redesigned by Brian a couple of years ago and filled with choice plants. The gorgeous blue corydalis `Pere David' is here, as are two plants that no Cork garden worth its salt can be without, the lovely ribleaved and sky-blue-flowered Chatham Island forget-me-not (Myosotidium hortensia) and the south African rope grass (Restio subverticillatus), a peculiar-looking thing, half-grass and half-pony's-tail. Foliage in every colour is also here: red and orange phormiums, pencil-thin blue conifers, the spider-like black Ophiopogon planiscapus `Nigrescens', a brand-new golden Dutchman's breeches (Dicentra spectabilis `Gold Heart') and the rapier-like Astelia `Silver Spear'.
Another garden where plant-collecting has got entirely out of control is that of Pat Keenan, chairman of the Harbour Board. An enormous hosta collection is just pushing out of the pinkybrown stony soil (the area, Clogheen is named for its stony ground): "I'm a hosta lunatic", he freely admits. But even more noteworthy is the evidence of maple-mania; there are over seventy Japanese maples, including one of the biggest cut-leaved Acer palmatum that I have ever seen in a private garden.
You are welcome to inspect each and every one of Pat Keenan's maples between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. next Saturday. As with all the gardens, entry is by donation at the gate, so go with generosity in your heart - and an umbrella in your hand, just on the off-chance that there might be a spot of rain.
Details of the Cork gardens and their opening hours are available from most garden centres in Cork, from Bord Failte, Grand Parade and from Marymount Hospice, telephone: 021-501201.