There are some things in life that are just there, and you never ask yourself where they came from or how they were made. Things like paper-clips, plugs for baths, combs, street-lights . . . and polystyrene trays of bedding plants. It's not as if the plants jumped neatly into those crisp white receptacles all by themselves. And they certainly weren't put there by the people in the garden centre, where everything arrives in big vans just ripe for selling, and where there is no room for the finicky business of actually growing things. No, the rearing of bedding plants - which are spawned in hundreds of thousands each year - requires a special expertise, infinite amounts of patience and total dedication.
To see what is involved in the raising of these crowds of tender plants, I took myself to a place that specialises in summer bedding and shrubs, not far from where I live. At Cintra Nurseries I was greeted by the workers with a warmth that you don't normally expect during peak season. David O'Sullivan showed me around the heated glasshouse where a grey brute of a generator juddered blasts of welcome heat into the chilly air. Thousands of green-filled pots are neatly lined up on the benches: stout hybrid pelargoniums, "nonstop" begonias, busy lizzies and Surfinia petunias. It's a beautiful, perfect sight - or a daunting one, when you consider that all need careful attention and constant, meticulous manoeuvring about. Soon, in a game of horticultural musical chairs, they'll be ferried into one of the three big, unheated polytunnels, and from there to a sheltered spot outside. Finally they'll advance into the sales area, or zoom off in the shiny new Cintra Nurseries van to land on the shelf of a garden centre. Meanwhile, all the stuff in the polytunnels is just one move ahead in this precise operation. It's overwhelming just thinking about it.
But David is not one bit fazed by what lies ahead: instead, he delights in the idea of all these plants moving on down the line, growing hardier and more mature with every orderly step. He apologises for the slight misplacement of some pots in their ranks and for one that doesn't have the correct level of compost.
David O'Sullivan is only 20 years old, but he is the self-appointed spokesman for the 19 others - ranging from 17 to 67 years - who work in Cintra. And boy! does he speak. Within minutes we have established the good health of myself and my family; he asks about my husband's job and even, engagingly, about his appearance. Our growing rapport suffers only slightly when I am forced to admit that I have never watched Eastenders and that I don't follow Manchester United. Politely ignoring my deficiencies, he invites me to visit again. David is one of the lucky people at the nursery: he can communicate freely, he can talk. Some of the others barely speak, others have only a few oft-repeated words, still others choose not to speak at all. The men and women who work here amongst the plants are impeded by learning disabilities - which range from the mild to the severe.
The nursery, a St John of God enterprise, is in the charge of Audrey Carroll: "We market ourselves just like any other nursery, and we go around in our van with our "looking good" list. Our customers want plants of a certain quality and at a certain price, and we can give them that. We don't need to play the violin at the same time."
Audrey keeps a close eye on plant trends to make sure that all the stock is up-to-date: so this year's 150,000-strong crop of summer bedders includes the recently-introduced `Million Bells' petunia, loads of golden-foliaged plants, a new yellow osteospermum `Sunny Alex' and the outsize, cartoon-like Turbo pansies. Customers' hanging baskets and containers can be filled with these - or other varieties such as bidens, bacopa, verbena, lobelia, pelargoniums, impatiens, begonias, laurentia and ivy. Better-known clients have included the RDS Horse Show and Dun Laoghaire Tidy Towns.
All the work is done by the 20 trainees under the supervision of horticultural instructors, Lorraine Creedon and Eoin Mooney. Valerie Waters, television presenter with BBC's Gardeners' World and RTE's The Garden Show, has just finished a stint as an instructor here, and still works as a volunteer. "You have to learn to recognise people's capabilities," she says. "If someone likes watering, then we give them that job, but at the same time encourage them to broaden."
This matching of person to job is perfectly borne out in the case of strong and sinewy Brendan Curran, who loves carrying things. Not only does he hoist things around tirelessly in the nursery and from the van, but some time ago he found work with the local milk man, doing deliveries.
Cintra Nurseries, Upper Glenageary Road, Dun Laoghaire is open from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday to Thursday, and from 9 a.m.- 3 p.m. on Friday. Telephone: 01- 2852900. Volunteers are welcome to contact the nursery.
Diary date: Today, 1.30-4 p.m, Cabinteely Community School, Johnstown Road, Dun Laoghaire, Alpine Garden Society show and plant sale.