In 1726, at the same time that the very first edition of Jonathan Swift's Gulli- ver's Travels was rolling laboriously off the press in Dublin, the plates for a volume by a lesser-known author were being inked up by a different printing house in the city. This now-rare publication was such a hit that it soon sold out and a second edition was published the following year. The book was Caleb Threlkeld's Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum, a treatise on the flora of Dublin and its vicinity. The plants were named in Latin, English and Irish, and a brief description of their medicinal uses - "an Abridgement of their Vertues" - was given.
Dr Threlkeld, a medical missionary and non-conformist minister, had come to Ireland 13 years earlier from Cumberland, hoping to convert the natives to the true faith. His popular flora - the first such book published in Ireland - proved a handy vehicle for attacking the various religious and botanical heretics who provoked him. Threlkeld was based in Mark's Alley, just a stone's throw away from St Patrick's Cathedral and Dean Swift's residence. Such proximity makes it possible that the two men knew each other, but in view of their differing beliefs, their being friends seems questionable.
Or maybe not, Jonathan Swift was a keen on plants and was an enthusiastic gardener: in his correspondence a year before the publication of Gulliver's Travels, he writes with delight about the success of his deanery garden of winding walks of roses, shrubs and trees, planted in the newly-fashionable naturalistic manner. The Dean was also a remarkable humanitarian, and upon his death in 1745, he put his money where his mouth was, so to speak, making a £12,000 bequest to found St Patrick's Hospital hospital for the mentally ill.
It is fitting then, that the hospital's Dean Swift lecture theatre is the venue for a garden seminar, "Scents and Sensibility", on September 18th, the fifth such event organised by the hard-working Friends of St Patrick's Hospital, in aid of research projects on mental health. The day's proceedings - introduced by Prof Anthony Clare, St Patrick's medical director - promise to be very stimulating for the 220 participants. Four entirely different garden experts - Anna Pavord, Matthew Jebb, Monty Don and Diarmuid Gavin - will take the floor and take flight on the wings of their own particular passions.
Dr Matthew Jebb, for instance, the horticultural taxonomist at Glasnevin's Botanic Gardens, will be taking his audience on a lively trip through the history of Irish botany - with colourful figures such as Threlkeld and Swift making an appearance early on. No doubt there will be meetings also with the likes of the 19th-century Quaker, W.H. Harvey, who despite battling for years with depression, was responsible for initiating a monumental flora of South Africa's Cape Kingdom.
I don't know whether Harvey ever attended St Patrick's Hospital for his illness, but if he did, he could only have been cheered by the bountiful vegetable gardens assiduously tended by the patients as part of their therapy. Of course, that was at a time when vegetable-growing was a necessity, rather than a luxury, as it seems to be nowadays. But if more people paid heed to Anna Pavord, the first of the seminar's speakers, we'd all be happily up to our oxters in vegetables.
Her book, The New Kitchen Garden, which has just been reissued in paperback (Dorling Kindersley, £9.99 in UK), continually inspires me to coax edible produce out of my dry and unwilling Dublin soil. I can't wait for further encouragement from her discourse on "Potagers, Pumpkins and Pears". (And I bet that after the seminar there will be 220 new kitchen garden projects in the offing.)
Another of my muses is Monty Don, author, television presenter and Observer gardening correspondent - although I preferred him when he was Montagu Don, it seemed to suit his distinctive mixture of the romantic and rambunctious. Still, Monty or Montagu, or Mister Don's The Sensuous Garden promises to bring us all back to the root of the matter: pure pleasure, so often forgotten when we are toiling and moiling in our plots.
The final speaker of the day, Diarmuid Gavin, whose subject is "Contemporary Design" will be known for the television programmes in which, to the delight and dismay of his "victims", he works radical changes on their gardens. He has also co-presented highlights of Chelsea Flower Show for the past two years. Gavin and fellow Irishman Vincent Barnes constructed show gardens for two years running at Chelsea, so he has been in the thick of it.
Some tickets for the seminar are still available. I've booked mine already: it's not often that you get to spend a Saturday in the company of four of the most interesting gardening folks around. And it certainly beats mowing the lawn, the inevitable alternative.
The "Scents and Sensibility" seminar is on September 18th at St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin 8. The fee, which includes lunch, is £65. Inquiries: The Secretary, The Friends of St Patrick's, St James's Street, Dublin 8. Telephone 01-6775423 ext. 632.