When the place is in full fig, dressed to the nines in forgiving flowers, fruit and foliage from early summer to late autumn, one can forget that it is a flimsy and fleeting thing.

Built on soft stems of very little substance, it will soon fall again to earth, leaving you with a monotonous, mainly horizontal vista for the whole of winter.

So look around you now, before the garden begins to fill out and disguise any basic design faults for yet another summer. Ask yourself what's lacking, though often you'll find that it's height, a vertical in some shape or form.

If creating permanent structure, say with a hedge, you can't go wrong with good traditional plants, such as yew, box or beech, or a mixture of evergreens including hollies, viburnum and bay laurel.

Less traditional though increasing in popularity as hedging or screening are the less invasive bamboos.

The so-called black bamboo, Phyllostachys nigra, can make an effective and very attractive screen in no time at all, particularly in a new garden.

When using bamboo this way, it really pays to buy tall plants . . . as many as you can afford . . . at the outset, to create instant structure, give instant privacy or effectively divide the garden into separate sections, if that's your aim.

Large, mature specimens (of any plant) are, naturally, more expensive than smaller ones, but with bamboo, they work out less expensive than they first appear.

This is because mature Phyllostachys nigra should be impressively tall but also very thick, with many individuals canes to a single plant. Each of these should then be divisible, by two if not by three, to make more.

Very recently, I moved two black bamboos, both of which were in situ less than two years.

From these two I made six tall plants, thereby creating an instant living screen to block out a small car park.

That was a good trick.

THE VEGETABLE GARDEN

If you have a patch of good open soil in sun which has been liberally laced with rotted manure, compost or leafmould fairly recently, then you might light to think about turning it over to early peas for a season, and/or to broad or fava beans as an experiment.

Freshly picked, these latter are excellent cooked with a little flair.

After boiling, toss in melted butter and/or olive oil, Maldon sea salt, black pepper and some lemon juice. (For a more substantial plate, you could add bits of crisped serrano ham).

Growing en masse in the garden, these beans are very pretty, usually having striking and headily-scented blackand-white flowers that look like art deco jewellery. Expect to start eating your springsown beans from June onwards.

The taller kinds of pea are generally more productive than the dwarfs and can be easily supported on twiggy sticks which you have saved from your spring prunings.

Alternatively, you can make a framework of bamboo canes (or sally rods, though these can take root so be aware) in an attractive shape and use string to tie them gently in.

Most productive of all, especially on small sites, are the mange tout types (French for "eat all" both pod and pea). My favourites are not the flat ones but the roundpodded varieties known as sugar snap peas.

If your first, early sowings of peas and/or beans gets eaten by slugs or rots away in over-wet weather, then you still have a well prepared site, which can be used for a later sowing of peas or green beans, including sweet peas.

Scented sweet pea is another member of the large legume family which likes the same rich, reasonably sunny living as its edible cousins.

They are not, however, edible, quite the contrary. The best scent of all sweetpeas comes from the original parent, imported some hundreds of years ago and called 'Cupani', after the man who sent it to these islands.

In view of any impending water shortages (they're going mad across the water warning of doom and drought at the moment), you can line the bottom of your pea and bean trenches with several layers of newspaper, which has first been well soaked in water.

Legumes are bottom feeders and also are great for fixing life- enhancing and elusive nitrogen in the soil.

THE FLOWER GARDEN

When the soil is not waterlogged, you can continue to divide congested clumps of herbaceous perennials, many of which have already started into growth.

Where you had one plant . . .

say a good blue hardy geranium . . . you can now have several of the same, to make a really good splash of rhyming colour later on, in early summer.

Hardy geraniums (nb for novices: not to be confused with the tender kind properly known as Pelargonium) are brilliant for covering the dying foliage of spring bulbs.

When splitting clump forming perennials, you discard the woody centre of the old parent and replant the healthy, vigorous young bits (with a good bit of root attached, of course) that you take from around the edges.

Incorporate lots of organic matter, to feed and condition the soil for the rest of the growing year.

WHAT'S ON

Until 7 April: Greening of Temple Bar exhibition at Culivate, the sustainable living centre at 15-19 Essex St West, Dublin 8, an area now being labelled the Old City. The thought-provoking exhibition, 'ReVisions - Design Proposals for a Pedestrian- friendly Old City' is a collaboration between Culivate and garden design students at Dun Laoghaire Senior College. It throws up some good (and some not so good) ideas and is worth a look.

The Sustainable Living Centre also has a new shop stocking plants, organic plant products, an interesting range of books as well as Fair Trade and lots of other stuff.

There is a cafe, free Linux internet access and a free monthly electronic newsletter to which you can suscribe at www. sustainabl e. ie.

Wed 5 April, 7.30pm, Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9: 'Ireland's Wild Orchids' by Brendan Sayers, glasshouse foreman, orchid expert and tv personality.

Adm free. Organised by the Irish Naturalists' Journal.