I have a lovely job. I like nothing better than poking around in other people's patches, admiring their treasures, examining their soil and gleaning information on how to grow this or that. Last month, on the wettest, windiest, nastiest day imaginable - a day when my water-proof jacket decided to become water-permeable - I was out and about in Wicklow looking at three gardens that I'd never been to before.
Despite being soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow, I've retained memorable images of them all, albeit glimpsed through a moist curtain of dense raindrops. The three, along with 34 others, are included in the Wicklow Gardens Festival, when both heritage properties and private gardens open wide their gates. And by now, I hope, the worst of the spring rains are over (promoting much welcome growth in the garden, it has to be said) and garden jaunts should be dry and happy.
My first stop was at Style Bawn House in Delgany, home of John and Susie Gaisford St Laurence. The long, rambling house (and it really does ramble: inside, the capricious corridors twist and dip waywardly) was originally an inn. The oldest part dates back to around 1600. Walter Raleigh was supposed to have stopped here early on, while three ghosts have felt so at home that they've stayed to the present day, according to Mr St Laurence.
The delightful old-fashioned gardens plunge dizzily downhill through a rockery and onto an immense swooping, swirling lawn - offering an enviable playground for that garden toy beloved by many men, the ride-on mower. Three Trout Stream, lined with hosta, primula and giant gunnera, trickles along at the bottom of the hill. Style Bawn is filled with remarkable plants: maples, camellias, rhododendrons and Japanese azaleas, a rare honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica "Zabelii"), a handkerchief tree (Davidia involucrata) and countless other trees, shrubs and perennials. It is most heartening to see that this ancient property is being continually rejuvenated with new plantings, ensuring its continuance as a fine Wicklow garden for decades to come.
Style Bawn is possibly the oldest private property to open especially for the festival. Dermot Kehoe's barely-hatched, three-quarter acre garden in Kilquade must be the newest. Dr Kehoe is well-known to many Dublin gardeners: his previous home at Roseville in Bray was a single-handed monument to one man's gardening passion. Alas, Roseville has been claimed by the developers, and Dermot has moved on (just 14 months ago) to coax a garden out of the "terrible soil" in New Russian Village, on a site that was once a quarry.
Bad drainage, gravel and a thin skim of soil were his lot, as well as a handful of conifers, and a greenhouse in the wrong place. Thirty tons of topsoil and a load each of mushroom compost and manure have made the land more workable, "and I save everything for composting to try and build up the soil." Moving and re-erecting the greenhouse was easier than expected, but the removal of its foundations took days and days of back-cracking labour. The garden is still in its infancy, but already a herbaceous border, a long rockery, a tiny woodland path and several beds of unusual plants (including the monstrous-looking, grey-foliaged spires of Echium wildpretii) are in place - a heroic amount of work for one man to achieve in just over a year.
Wendy and Peter Harrison have had more than 10 years to knock their Greystones garden, Holmsdale, into shape. It is neatly divided into three compartments: a front garden with golden and variegated plants making a sunny splash in winter, a middle garden where the neatly fenced-off beds have been dog-proofed against four lively spaniels, and a cleverly designed rear garden. Here the rectangular shape has been manipulated by a wide shrub border so that it seems to recede to a point - an idea that visitors might borrow for their own territories. Packed with interesting specimens, Holmsdale is a good place to see the range of plants that thrive in a sheltered garden - from the near-tender evergreen (or perhaps "ever-purple", to be correct), leathery-leaved, small tree, Dodonea viscosa "Purpurea" to the hardy little double primroses that Wendy has collected together.
But what interests me about this and the many other private gardens that open occasionally during the festival, is that they are real people's gardens, displaying all the little eccentricities and problems of real people. Arrangements for propagating plants, making compost, storing pots, drying clothes, hiding dustbins and curbing dogs are all bravely on view. We should celebrate these courageous garden-owners who graciously allow a slice of their life to be probed by all comers. Most of the proceeds go to charity, so go generously and go often during the Wicklow Gardens Festival.
Wicklow Gardens Festival runs until July 28th. Phone 0404-20100 or fax 0404-67792 for a free brochure. The full guide to the festival is on the Internet: www.wicklow.ie/gardens/intro.html