THERE is a certain corner in Cabinteely, in the southern suburbs of Dublin at which passers-by slacken to a halt, settling themselves along the convenient elbow-high wall, the better to get a good gawk at the sight on the other side.
Over the wall is the garden of Pat Heavey: a mesmerising place, where grass paths of greenest green swirl around countless island beds filled with the beautiful consequences of 30 years of garden shopping.
"In the old days. I used to say to the milkman when he came with his bill, `Don't come today: wait until next week. I'm going to the garden centre!' " remembers the creator of this dramatic space, an artistic fusion of theatre and horticulture.
Hundreds of different shrubs are packed into the beds and borders, while slung around them are bright ribbons of forget-me-nots, tulips, hyacinths, polyanthus, late daffodils and early poppies. Fine-leaved Japanese maples pour on to the lawn, strong-limbed magnolias hold up their cupped ivory flowers, massed plantings of shapely conifers "which look best at twilight" give a strong geometry to this bravely asymmetrical garden. Thuja `Smaragd', which grow naturally into tall and slim forms, rise out of the ground like evergreen pillars. drawing the eye up and giving it a rest from the exuberant activity below.
Some passers-by are content to gaze over the wall for a few minutes: braver types come right in and make themselves at home on one of the many benches. One old couple - "I've no idea who they are", says Heavey - comes regularly.
When Pat Heavey and her family moved to the house in 1967. "we didn't have a clue about gardening". Her approach to shrub-planting was unique: "I used just dig a hole, put them down and shake holy water on them. Honest to God."
The first to receive this treatment was a camellia, bought for the extravagant sum of 63 shillings at the old Marlfield nursery. "I brought it home, set it there and shook the holy water on it." Two days later she had to dig it up and reposition it, because she had learned in the meantime that camellia flowers shouldn't be exposed to early-morning sun after a frosty night. "It died on me anyway." True, she had neglected to give it the holy water therapy the second time, but more importantly, she had not realised that acid-loving camellias would not survive in her alkaline soil.
Now she fortifies her soil with "heaps of `Brown Gold', mountain soil and peat", and her camellias - 47 at last count - are covered in excessive amounts of blossom. One, a huge `Donation' is so wrapped in pink blooms that the dark, glossy leaves are barely visible. After flowering Pat gives her camellias "plenty of `Sequestrin'. And you must keep watering them, don't let them dry out."
"Trial and error" has been Mrs Heavey's motto, nothing in the garden has been pre-planned or mapped out on paper. The complicated interplay of curvaceous beds and sinuous grass paths has metamorphosed over the years. "I'm always chopping off bits of the lawn, making lovely big curves in the flower beds," she says. "I might think, that curve is wrong and I go for the shovel. My husband used to say, `My poor lawn there'll be no lawn left' and I'd say, `If you want a lawn, you can go to the park.'"
But no park lawn could ever be as sumptuous as this one, even though "I never water it, no matter what weather comes. You can't kill grass in Ireland, I feel."
Pat Heavey's garden is a constant winner, literally. A while ago she had to be barred from entering the local competition for best garden, as she was persistently carrying off the first prize year after year, with nobody else getting a look-in. Nowadays, the only competition she enters - "they talked me into it the last couple of years is the Shamrock National Gardens Competition, in which she has come first in her category, A Small Garden For All Seasons, "about five times". Her recipe for winning is "hard work, and colour all year round."
And, of course, that special duo: "trial and error".