It has been a season of abundance, at least in my part of the world: shrubs spangled with berries, trees clanking with fruit, water falling endlessly from the sky - and freshly-printed Irish garden books piling up like autumn leaves. While it's true that I'm feasting on this paper glut, I can't help wishing that the various publishers had planned their produce more considerately. As it is, few of us can afford to buy all the books, so we're forced into difficult choices. Naturally, what we really want is all of them, spaced at decent intervals - instead of this unseemly pre-Christmas crush.
Recently entering the fray is Glorious Gardens of Ireland by 36-year-old garden writer and photographer Melanie Eclare. This follows last month's publication of Olda FitzGerald's Irish Gardens and it just pips at the post (by one day) Marianne Heron's Gardens of Ireland.
Eclare, who is based in southern England, has been visiting and photographing gardens in this country for a number of years. Her first trip, in 1995, was funded by a Merlin Trust scholarship, the grant scheme for young gardeners backed by plants-person and photographer Valerie Finnis. From the fruits of that 10-day excursion she was able to sell four sets of photographs to the British magazine, Gardens Illustrated.
It was a heartening start to a new direction in her life, and far more satisfying than her earlier career in advertising in London. She had left that high-octane, ephemera-driven world - and her job as account manager for Courage beers - some years previously to go and work with an environmental group. "I wanted to do something that was more in touch with who I was as a person," she says.
Gardening began to fill her spare time, and then overflow into everything else until "I ended up just wanting to garden". After a part-time course in horticulture she moved to Dorset and a post as a gardener: "I was really thrown in the deep end!" She managed to keep afloat, buoyed up in part by her growing endeavours in garden and plant photography. And, last January, in the most recent shift along this chameleon-like lifepath, she resigned her gardening job to concentrate on the final phases of the book, and other - "they're confidential" - projects.
Glorious Gardens of Ireland features 20 gardens which range from secret places such as Ballinacarriga, the two-acre private patch of Sean O'Criadain in east Cork to the full-blown, fantastical excesses of the National Trust's Mount Stewart in Co Down. "I chose gardens that were still being gardened. I'm interested in what's going on in the gardens today and the people who are doing it."
Inevitably this leads to a yet another rounding up of those hardworking hardy perennials such as Jim Reynolds (who wrote the book's introduction) of Butterstream, Co Meath; Helen Dillon of Sandford Road in Dublin; and the late Corona North of Altamont, Co Carlow. It's a trio that most of us are happy to read about and learn from until the cows come home.
Other dedicated, and previously unsung - or undersung - gardeners are here too: organic pioneer Rod Alston of Eden Plants in Co Leitrim; Janie Metcalfe who pulled her garden, stone by stone, out of an abandoned farm site in Co Down; and David Stewart-Moore who has been quietly constructing a romantic water garden in Co Antrim for nearly 50 years.
We are introduced to Larchill in Co Kildare, but not for the first time: this quirky ornamental farm and folly-speckled landscape (recently refurbished under the Great Gardens of Ireland Restoration Programme) has been the darling of the British media. And we get a sneak preview of the ongoing restoration (funded by the same scheme) of the six-acre walled garden at Kylemore Abbey in Connemara - but, strangely, no glimpse or mention of its dynamic head gardener, Ann Golden. Preparing her book was a "wonderful experience", even getting up at the crack of dawn to catch the best light: "very low, soft light. You get good close-ups at that time of the morning."
Another book launched last month by the same publisher, Kyle Cathie, also has an Irish connection. Ground Cover is written by Co Down man, John Cushnie, whose burry, northern tones will be known to and loved by listeners to BBC Radio Four's Gardeners' Question Time.
Cushnie's approach to choosing plants for ground cover is literal: as long as it covers the soil and prevents weeds from breaking through, it's a candidate. Therefore herbaceous plants, alpines, shrubs, ferns, grasses, conifers, fruit and vegetables can all be pressed into service as good-looking weed-stiflers.
The book deals with many different situations, including dry shade, damp shade, woodland, heavy clay soil, exposed sites, swimming pools and tennis courts. A plant directory lists a thousand different plants and their uses. It's an admirable tool for the new gardener.
Glorious Gardens of Ireland by Melanie Eclare is published by Kyle Cathie at £19.99. Ground Cover by John Cushnie is published by Kyle Cathie at £19.99.