IF YOU were a fly on the wall of George and Rose Sevastopulo's Howth garden - or even a greenfly on a bud - you'd see that George is nearly always on his knees while Rose prefers a more upright attitude.
No, no, no! There is nothing bizarre here at all. It's just that, as with all perfect gardening partnerships, their domains are entirely exclusive. George prefers, in general, to concentrate closely on miniature plants, alpines and dwarf varieties, whereas Rose admits that "anything, under six inches, I don't see it.
Her preference is for herbaceous perennials, and in the front garden she grows a lush jumble of shade-lovers: dicentra, navelwort, epimediums, Solomon's seal and anemones. But her consuming passion is for billowing, Blowsy poppies: their generous, splashy blooms cocking a vulgar snook at George's delicate little gems.
Yet George's gems, despite their diminutive stature, are threatening to take over the back garden. Ascending terraces of warm Howth stone hold gravelled beds filled with ground-hugging plants. Shelves erected wherever a hit of wall will support them - and window sills are lined with hundreds of pots.
Granite troughs, each one housing plants from a different geographical area, sit like green-tufted beached whales on the small patio - and they are every hit as cumbersome to move. The secret is "rollers made from steel pipe, and a crowbar", according to George, who is a geology professor at Trinity College Dublin.
Alpine gardeners are an acquisitive lot: sure there's never any problem squeezing just one more itsy-bitsy treasure into the tiniest garden. And naturally, with so many hundreds of specimens literally on the doorstep - each one with its own finicky little personality - any rock gardener worth his salt becomes an alpine therapist. Does this Dianthus need less to drink? Will this Lewisia go into shock if moved just another inch into the sun? Why is that Raoulia going bald?
The questions that concern George are mainly to do with the hardiness of his subjects. Just how much cold can a plant take? If its feet are kept dry will it survive a wet winter?
And so he never cossets them (except when they are unredeemably wimpish). Rather, he pushes them to their furthest limits - with some surprising results. Take for instance the case of two plants from the Algarve: a thyme and a cistus. Neither in their natural habitat has ever met a single degree of frost, and yet here they waltzed through the hitter weather last winter.
And then there are the members of the Rhodohypoxis clan from South Africa: in Ireland they are as tough as old boots, hut "in Scotland there isn't one left after the winter" - said with a discernible note of glee. Lucky Ireland: even Rose agrees that the Rhodohypoxis genus are beautiful - although they are only a couple of inches high. Their upturned faces, from faintest white to most blushing pink will bloom all summer long in the Sevastopulos's garden.