Outside the window there is a lovely winter cherry which has been flowering for some weeks. Its papery blossom - pink in the bud and near-white when unfurled - will decorate its twigs off and on until spring when it will celebrate the new season with a final, generous flush. The fragile, light flowers, beautiful at any time of the year, are especially welcome in the dead days of winter. This tree is doubly precious: it came into this garden in the nicest possible way - as a wedding present.
And recently, I discovered this particular variety of cherry has Irish connections, making it even more appealing. The first one in this country - and, possibly, in Europe - was imported from Japan in 1901 by Tom Smith of Daisy Hill Nursery in Newry. In deference to Smith, the tree bore his name for a time, when it was known as Prunus microlepis var. smithii. But, as any gardener knows, plant names can change for reasons which are bewildering to the non-botanist, and Tom Smith's cherry is now designated Prunus subhirtella `Autumnalis'.
Behind the cherry tree is another "Irish" plant, Solanum crispum `Glasnevin', the climbing potato vine (it is a blood relative of the spud). Its starry blue flowers start to come out as the cherry finishes in spring, and when they finally fade away in autumn, the cherry is ready to go again. This form of Solanum crispum, which has bigger and brighter flowers than the original Chilean species, arose in Dublin's Botanic Gardens at the end of the last century, and it is now a favoured wall-climber in temperate gardens everywhere.
Most of the above information I gleaned from reading an advance copy of Charles Nelson's An Irish Flower Garden Replanted, which is being published around now. This scholarly work is a revised and expanded edition of the earlier An Irish Flower Garden which came out in 1984 - and which cannot be got for love nor money now. Dr Nelson is well-known among plantspeople for his writings, and for having worked at the Botanic Gardens as a horticultural taxonomist (one of those people responsible for naming - and changing the names of - plants).
Wendy Walsh, who has collaborated with Dr Nelson on a number of other publications, has brought her sensitive and precise skills to the watercolours and drawings that illustrate the book. Only yesterday, Trinity College made the octogenarian artist a doctor of letters, a fitting reward for her years of thoughtful and meticulous botanical brushwork. The book reveals the stories behind many of the plants in Irish gardens: their histories, pedigrees and often exotic origins. Of all the plants in our gardens, only a handful are native, which means many have special tales to tell. And often the person who ensured that plant's place in gardens worldwide is an Irish man or woman.
SOME Of the plants described in Nelson and Walsh's book have arisen spontaneously in this country, such as the Irish yew (Taxus baccata `Fastigiata') - the upright, sombre yew of churchyards - that was discovered in the mid-18th century by someone out hare-coursing in Fermanagh; others, such as the rose `Galway Bay', were the product of expert breeding - in the rose's case by Sam McGredy in Portadown, who crossed `Heidelberg' with `Queen Elizabeth' and came up with the salmon-pink climber.
Many plants were introduced from abroad by Irish plant-hunters: Augustine Henry spent much time in China during the last century, when he collected, among others, the blue-flowered rhododendron, R. augustinii, the sweetly-scented winter-flowering Sarcococca humilis and Itea ilicifolia, which bears long, fragrant catkins in summer. As well as doing his own planthunting, Dr Henry employed Chinese collectors - with mixed success. One specimen supplied by a man from Patung caused quite a stir, and led to an entirely new genus being designated, but the plant, eventually named as Actinotinus sinensis, turned out to be a practical joke: viburnum flowers had been stuck into the bud of a horse-chestnut.
Charles Nelson, who recounts these things, is an academic type of person, and this is evident in the highly erudite, mannerly - and sometimes schoolbookish - writing. An Irish Flower Garden Replanted coasts gently from subject to subject, with inspiring interludes provided by Wendy Walsh's light-filled and soulful illustrations. For those who are curious about our plant heritage, this is an essential book: one that will be referred to again and again.
An Irish Flower Garden Replanted by E. Charles Nelson with illustrations by Wendy F. Walsh is available in bookshops or the publisher, Edmund Burke, Cloonagashel, 27 Priory Drive, Blackrock, Co Dublin, tel: 01 2882159. General edition £24.95; special limited edition £200.