Off the beaten track...
DEBORAH BEGLEY'S NURSERY lies roughly twenty miles from Limerick city — down a sleepy country lane so peaceful that the local children often play football there. In fact, if it weren't for the series of tiny, hand-painted signs jointly marked Terra Nova Plants and Martin Begley Class, it would be easy to get lost in the network of narrow roads that criss-cross this lovely part of the country. Deborah Begley and her husband Martin first moved here, near the village of Dromin, in 1991, from a cottage they'd been living in not far away. Their new house came with a neglected and uncultivated half-acre of heavy clay soil, and it wasn't until three years later, in 1994, that the Begleys thought about creating a garden. Ten years on again, that same half-acre is a little treasure trove chock-full of rare
and unusual plants, and the adjoining nursery is a fascinating little shop of curiosities.
Deborah Begley is a collector of plants, and her enthusiasm for propagation has led to an extraordinary variety of botanical oddities and rarities, including the carnivorous Sarracenia, and the impressively spooky mandrake, a narcotic plant that was once believed to have magical powers. An albino form of the common garden dandelion flowers away quite happily in the Begley's garden, as does Cardamine pratensis 'Flore Pleno', a double form of the wild 'cuckoo flower'. Unlike the wild flower, the former, a pretty, lilac-flowering plant, doesn't self-sow but rather increases slowly from self-rooting leaflets. Likewise, the white-flowering dandelion is not invasive; in fact, Deborah has to take special care not to unwittingly weed it out along with wild cousins.
Terra Nova Plants is perhaps best known for its collection of arisaema or 'jack-in-the-pulpit', and while the 2004 catalogue offers eleven different varieties for sale, Deborah grows more than fifty in her own garden. As a member of the Arisaema Enthusiasts' Croup, she has sourced some very unusual species, including Arisaema consanguineum 'The Perfect Wave', whose undulating leaves have a central stripe of silver. The arisaemas are elegant shade-lovers, which in early summer produce strangely twisting, flaring spathes, often subtly striped and mottled. Deborah grows them in her shade garden, in soil lovingly enriched with plenty of leaf-mould and compost.
The garden at Dromin is home to many exquisite foliage plants, and a recent acquisition is the rare rice paper plant, Tetrapanax papyrifer 'Rex', a tender shrub that produces giant palmate leaves with brown felty undersides. It took several years for Deborah to track this plant down, and it is a prized possession that overwinters in the glasshouse. Variegated foliage plants are another interest, and Terra Nova Plants offers an impressive collection, including a plant Deborah believes to be the only variegated bergenia in cultivation. It has the rather unfortunate name of 'Tubby Andrews'. She also sells the variegated horseradish, Armoracia rusticana 'Variegata', with leaves that vary between being entirely cream or splashed with green. Very brave gardeners might be interested in a variegated form of the Japanese knotweed, called Fallopia japonica 'Milk Boy'. Deborah is quite aware of this plant's invasive qualities, so much so that she treats it like mint, sinking it in a large pot into the border rather than planting it into the ground. It
grows to about two metres high and its leaves are splashed with pink and green.
But Terra Nova Plants is not just about rare foliage plants, or botanical curiosities. Deborah grows many flowering plants also, such as the inkily beautiful black rampion, Phyteuma nigrum, whose spidery purple flowers would look just right in a dark border. The catalogue offers various species of clematis, including Clematis tashiroi, a strong grower with mottled leaves and purple flowers. Also listed is Echinops sphaerocephalus 'Arctic Clow', an interesting variety of the ornamental thistle, with white globular flowers atop red stems and silvered foliage. There are also many forms of Helleborus x hybridus for sale, and a rare, perfumed variety of Helleborus foetidus called 'Miss Jekyll's Scented', which has purple and pale green flowers from winter until late spring.

Deborah Begley is expert in the art of coaxing seeds into germination, even when it comes to some of the more stubborn genus such as eryngium, which needs a period of chilling before it finally bursts into growth. She uses a method first popularised by Norman C. Deno, professor of chemistry at Pennsylvania University. Seeds are sown onto folded, damp tissue paper, then sealed in a plastic bag. Each bag may have up to twenty different types of seed stacked up carefully in layers, and has to be checked carefully every couple of days. These are placed near a lightbox — Deborah has made her own, out of standard fluorescent bulbs — which provides the seeds and emerging seedlings with both light and heat. Given these artificial conditions, young seedlings will grow away quite happily even in the depths of winter.

As a result of what Deborah herself admits is an addiction to seed sowing, Terra Nova Plants also offers a range of seed for sale; much of it from unusual sources. Deborah sponsors some seed-collecting expeditions, in return for which she gets a portion of all seed collected. She also gets seed from fellow addicts, many of them keen gardeners whom she's met over the internet, while yet more seed is bought from specialist seed suppliers such as Chiltern Seeds and Plantworld. Of course, Deborah also collects seeds from her own garden. All of which means that Terra Nova Plants' seed catalogue offers an idiosyncratic collection of plants guaranteed to interest any gardener. A particular favourite of hers is kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate, or Polygonum orientate, an annual with drooping tassels of rose-pink flowers, which can grow up to two and half metres. Then there's the perfumed Impatiens tinctoria, whose giant white flowers are not dissimilar to an orchid.
These are just some of the delicacies that this fascinating and eccentric little nursery has to offer, for Deborah Begley is one of life's enthusiasts and her passion for plants means that she will always be experimenting with rare and unusual plants. For those visiting the nursery, keep in mind that there is a separate admission charge to the garden, which is absolutely worth a visit. For those who cannot make it to Limerick, a mail order service is available between October and May.