Showing finely detailed paintings of four kinds of native Irish tree, they were painstakingly made in miniature by botanical artist Susan Sex, who used a magnifying visor and sometimes a microscope while working.

Her fresh and airy images show an oak, an ash, an arbutus and a yew tree, along with separate, largerscale illustrations of each tree's leaves and seeds. The names are helpfully given in Irish, Latin and English.

They are a great addition to the popular and educational Flora & Fauna series of stamps which An Post has been issuing every year without fail since 1978.

Again as tree week closes, one wonders what's the point of this event with its cap-in-hand mentality, as though tree planting was some marginal, once-a-year event, a do-good eco thing instead of what it should be, a very important issue at the centre of our environmental policy. If the politicians cared a fig about the future and the young people they would be planting trees all over the country to ensure a healthier environment.

It's well known too that where trees and green space are provided, the crime rate plummets because they make people feel better about everything.

We don't need a tree week. We need a sensible policy and attitude to reafforestation and urban tree planting, urgently. And if the Green Party were green, wouldn't it be spearheading such a campaign, which it is not? And if the Greens come out of the woodwork and claim they are, well all I can say is if they are, and we don't know about it, then they're obviously not.

Some winter pruning As you prowl around your garden in this gentler weather, you may notice that the leaves of some things have become brown and are curling at the edges.

This condition is not a disease; it's frostbite that has caused them to curl up and die at the tips, though further inside the plant should be more protected and better able to survive the low temperatures.

This browning-off and knocking back . . . a natural form of winter pruning . . .

has happened here to the sweet-scented summer jasmine that grows out of an old, lime-mortared stone wall, while a sub-shrubby salvia, Salvia guaranitica, that usually stands up well to any weather, has lost all but one of its limbs to the cold, though I'm not too worried as there are wellrooted replacements waiting in the wings. And besides, it was planted in the wrong place and always looked awkward and apologetic.

Another plant susceptible to frost is the hydrangea, and it can be hard to see if this has been hit at first. But I wouldn't worry, as it usually sprouts back in all parts of Ireland.

Leave hydrangea pruning for another few weeks and then you can cut the stems back to fat, undamaged buds.

Also remove completely any useless, weak twiggy bits, especially at the centre of the plant.

The unusually low temperatures here had no effect at all on the hugely architectural South African evergreen Honey Bush, Melianthus major, which was fortuitously left to overwinter unpruned this year and is now flaunting its strange crimson-brown flowers. I say fortuituous because this beauty's well-ripened wood can withstand lower temperatures than if it had been cut back to the quick and treated as an herbaceous perennial, which is how it is usually grown, for its foliage, in gardens. Frost or no frost, all remaining dead and diseased branches of trees and shrubs can be removed now.

DIARY 16-19 March, MyHome. ie Spring House & Garden Show, RDS Simmonscourt, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 This year, the Crafts Council of Ireland's feature garden, designed by Oliver and Liat Schurmann of Mount Venus Nursery . . . who triumphed at Hampton Court with their water garden last summer . . .

promises to be a major highlight of this usually lively show. The Schurmanns' brief was to design a garden incorporating some of the best examples of contemporary Irish craft. Rather than using the garden as a background for the products, they will "blend them seamlessly in a strikingly wild setting". Their garden is called 'To The Waters and The Wild' and is inspired by the landscape of the Wicklow Mountains, where a lot of craftspeople live and work.

GARDEN OPEN It's time to visit The Dillon Garden again, which is open from 2pm-6pm during the month of March for the exhilarating spring show. The inspirational Dillon Garden is at No 45 Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6, and should not be missed.