I wanted to bury the house in the garden," says Linda Murphy o the 1930s, tile-roofed bungalow that snuggles under an evergreen cloak of Clematis armandii, the variegated, flop-leaved ivy 'Paddy's Pride' and other home-consuming plants. In the front garden, instead of an angular house being dominant, the most sharply delineated feature is a tiny circular lawn: a giant green frisbee fortuitously landed in a border of red Japanese maple, silvery celmisias and other choice plants.
But, of course, in this carefully choreographed suburban plot in Churchtown, nothing is left to chance. Every combination is the result of meticulous deliberation. Linda's way with plants stemmed from her interest in flower arranging: "It helps you become familiar with aspects of design such as form, texture, dominance and proportion." (What a good idea -~-- if we all thought of our gardens as outsized vases or tracts of green florist's foam, we'd probably avoid those awful skewed mistakes resulting from lack of balance.)
Linda's husband, Tim, who owns a garage, is the right-hand man that most gardeners dream of (I know 1 do). "He does all the hard-landscaping, the trellising and paving," says Linda. "He made all the window-boxes as well. He doesn't know one plant from the next, so he doesn't interfere. It's an arrangement that works very well." (She has no idea just how lucky she is.)
Inevitably, Linda soon developed a strong sense of garden planning, and three years ago went on to hone this skill at the well-thought-of John Brookes School of Garden Design. Now, while combining work as a floral demonstrator, garden designer and mother, she is entering her second year in UCD's master's degree in landscape architecture.
As with most gardeners, Linda's views on planting are becoming more finely tuned as time goes on. "There was a time I had about 40 Leylandii trees and trained them into a hedge, and I planted alyssum-lobelia-alyssum-lobelia all the way down. I thought it was the bee's knees." Those heady bedding plant days are long over, though, and nowadays select trees and shrubs form the frame- work of her garden, with flashes of flower colour provided by well-placed herbaceous perennials, roses and a few annuals.
"I definitely think that you can have as much beauty and form with shrubs as you can with nine thousand flowers," she says. "The more I'm developing as a gardener, the less I'm enjoying pretty little pansies in winter. I just want to see the tracery of the trees." The trees that really make their mark in the hibernating, winter garden are those with exciting bark, she explains, such as Prunus serrula with its shiny, peeling coppery surface; Acer griseum, the paper-bark maple; and Betula jacquemontii, the Himalayan birch with its ghostly chalk-white trunk and limbs.
Evergreens, such as various pittosporum, viburnum and euonymus - and box of course - add year-round structure. The New Zealand flaxes or phormiums, are frequently used to make strong sculptural statements, their sword-leaves contrasting with smaller foliage, or in the case of the red-tinged 'Jester', with the spidery, crimson flowers of a bergamot. Favourite shrubs include hydrangeas, of which Linda has 40 varieties - hard to believe, as her back garden is a relatively modest 90 by 40 feet, and the front is a very big postage stamp. But start looking, and there are hydrangeas everywhere, in cunning combinations, such as the furry-leaved, purple-veined Hydrangea villosa growing with the smoke bush, Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple'; or the popular white-flowered Hydrangea 'Annabelle' next to an unusual pittosporum, 'Platinum', a beautiful cultivar of Pittosporum eugenoides with pale-green, white-edged, long leaves and dark stems.
Different kinds of pittosporum are just some of the foliage plants that Linda uses in her flower arrangements. Others include euonymus, holly, conifers and ivy: especially for dining table arrangements. "I favour a simple look - just a candle and ivy with a ribbon can be really lovely." If you're interested in learning more about Linda's ideas, you can join one of the day-long courses that she gives with Moyra Fraser, the former cookery editor of Good Housekeeping. The morning is devoted to preparing simple, but tasty food, and the afternoon to floral art. The courses are held in Linda's smart conservatory where a 'Black Hamburgh' grape vine hung with delightfully blobby fruits writhes across the ceiling.
ò To book a place on one of Linda Murphy's and Moyra Fraser's Christmas Food and Flowers days on November 19th or 20th, phone course co-ordinator Grainne Keating at (01) 4936505. Course fee £55 (including lunch with wine).