Last year I made my first acquaintance with the catalogue from Chiltern Seeds in England. The tall, thin volume is a prince among seed catalogues, filled with fine flora described in gorgeous, entertaining prose. There are no photographs and no gimmicks, just thousands and thousands of wordpictures of plants ranging from the humble lawn daisy (Bellis perennis) to the mighty Californian redwood (Sequoia sempervirens).
By the time I had read and reread the last of its 300 riveting pages, it was May, and far too late to send off the order-form. This year I was better prepared, and did all my seed-ordering one rainy weekend after Christmas. Rushing through the catalogue, I paused only briefly to wonder which of the 18 kinds of basil or 37 varieties of hardy geranium to choose. And to marvel at entries such as the one for seeds of the baobab tree, Adansonia digitata: ". . . not only is it one of the world's largest with a trunk that can be up to 40 feet in circumference, but it must be one of the few trees anywhere to have had a lavatory (with flush) built in while still alive. Although unlikely to reach such proportions in your greenhouse, it should nevertheless make a most interesting pot plant with its large, dark green leaves."
After that kind of titbit, the glossy pamphlets from Suttons, Unwin and Thompson & Morgan make tame reading indeed. But they are just as effective at whetting the appetite with their shiny pictures of bright blooms: bigger, better and much healthier than any grown in normal people's gardens. Day-glo poppies, candystriped petunias, snow-white gardenias and sweet little violets burst out of the pages and beg to be given a chance in your soil.
And that is the alluring trickery of the seed catalogue: it packs a powerful combination of fantasy and promise. In the dreams that float around the seed-buyer's head, plants go miraculously from tiny seed to perfect maturity without all the fiddly in-between phases - and more and more packets of seed are added to the list. In January, the mind's eye garden is overflowing with flawless plants, all gracefully placed and blooming in excellent synchronicity.
But around April, reality asserts itself when the greenhouse is filled with thousands of needy seedlings, all demanding to be pricked out or potted on. Innocent trays of a few dozen seeds have metamorphosed into a serious propagation-management problem requiring massive supplies of potting compost and 3-inch pots. There are difficult decisions to make and a lot of hard work ahead.
But still, the pleasure to be got from successfully raising a plant from seed is immense, and for me, it is one of the greatest thrills in gardening.
Most annuals are easy to grow from seed. Among my favourites are the morning glories, especially the red Ipomoea `Cardinalis' (from Suttons) and the widely available `Heavenly Blue' with its three-inch azure trumpets. And the stately white-flowered tobacco, Nicotiana sylvestris (Thompson & Morgan) has an almost invisible seed, but it grows up to be a five-foot tower of fragrance, its sweet perfume matched only by the modest, lilac-flowered night-scented stock.
Many vegetables and just about all salads are most obliging crops, and with just a couple of minutes between garden and table, you'll never experience a fresher taste. Sadly, some of the older, beloved varieties are no longer available in commerce, thanks to some especially dim-witted EU legislation. But, fortunately the seeds are still available through various seedsavers' schemes. The organic gardening organisation, the Henry Doubleday Research Association, runs a Heritage Seed Library and a seed-swap register. This year, among other vegetables, I'll be trying the climbing French bean, `Cherokee Trail of Tears' (so called because it accompanied the Cherokees when they were forced on the move in the 1830s) and the pink-and-lilac-flowered pea, `Carlin' which dates from Elizabethan times.
Closer to home, there's the Irish Garden Plant Society, which this year has a seed list of 399 varieties, including some particularly covetable plants, such as the bronzy-black-foliaged Anthriscus sylvestris `Ravenswing' and the dark-red-flowered masterwort, Astrantia major `Hadspen Blood'.
This year, if you never have before, go and buy a packet of seed. Think about this: 500 seeds of salad rocket (which self-seeds) costing 99 pence, will give you and your friends rocket galore for the rest of your life. Incidentally, that's the same price as one of those plastic containers of limp leaves from the supermarket.
Irish Garden Plant Society, c/o The National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9. Annual membership: £15.
Chiltern Seeds (send £2 postal order for catalogue): Bortree Stile, Ulverston, Cumbria LA12 7PB, England. Tel: 0044-1229-581137. Email: chilternseedscompuserve.com
HDRA Heritage Seed Library, Ryton Organic Gardens, Coventry CV8 3LG, England. Tel: 0044- 1203-303517. Email: enquiryhdra.org.uk. Annual membership of HSL £16 sterling.
Suttons: catalogue available from selected garden centres and from Goldcrop, John F. Kennedy Park, Killeen Road, Dublin 12. Tel: 01-4504388.
Thompson & Morgan: catalogue available from garden centres, including Mr Middleton, Dublin.
Unwins: catalogue available from selected garden centres, including Mackey's, Sandycove.
`The pleasure from raising a plant from seed is immense'