Despite having the 'Wow!'

factor in spades, these silken beauties are often perceived as too big or too messy to have in a smallish garden.

That might well be true if these fabulous things insisted on taking up as much ground for the whole season as they do at their gloriously wanton peak, but they are much more obliging plants than that.

In late spring, they start producing decorative cut foliage, which acts as good ground cover come tulip time.

This is when the taller varieties should be staked, if you want to keep them in some order later in the season.

On the other hand, you might prefer the floppy effect, so if there are other sturdy perennial plants, including roses, nearby, you can always let the Oriental fellows lean on those instead and let them poke their big, beautiful heads through wherever they may.

But this latter, laissez faire style of gardening calls for a strong nerve and is not for everyone.

As spring turns to summer, the different varieties of Oriental poppies start producing exotic sheathed buds, followed by truly amazing, mostly enormous shot silk flowers in a remarkable, almost unbelievable range of colours. Then, when those go over, the whole plant . . . flowered stems and leaves . . . can be cut right back to the ground with impunity, leaving plenty of space for neighbours to spread their wings or for popping in later stuff. At this stage, you can reward their efforts with water and a generous amount of fresh compost or other bulky organic stuff.

The perennial and quieter but very good blue cornflower, Centaurea montana, is similarly easygoing and responds well to the same treatment when plants start to look messy and flowering slows down, which is beginning to happen now. Afterwards, it will always produce fresh, silvery rosettes of leaves from the crown of the plant and quite often, a later and lesser flush of blue flowers. Centaurea dealbeata 'sternbergii' is also excellent, with upright good magenta flowers and scalloped foliage.

It too allows itself to be cut back without demur.

I love most campanula but have a soft spot for the first one I ever owned, the white Campanula persicifolia 'Alba'.

(There are very good blues and lilacs in this group too. ) An almost luminous plant that grows to roughly 3ft tall, C. persicifolia is very generous about seeding itself about, usually in the most fetching places beside complementary companions and often in shade, where it shines out of the gloom.

This bellflower is not quite trouble-free, however, and if you want to keep it flowering for ages and looking good as well, then it needs constant deadheading, by hand. A sticky, sappy job but worth it, particularly in a small garden where every detail is important. Near the end of the flowering season, do leave a plant or three to set seed, out of the limelight. Campanula persicifolia also forms good clumps, which can easily be divided in autumn or spring, to make lots and lots more plants.

DIARY TODAY, at 5pm at the Garden Heaven Show at Punchestown, a ringing bell will herald the last hour of the show and the beginning of a bumper sale of the plants at 'knockdown' prices.

Nurseries participating in the sell-off include Crug Farm with very rare shade-loving plants, Gorey-based Chelsea Goldwinning Kilmurry, which specialises in herbaceous perennials, Hewitt Cooper with carnivorous plants, David Austin Roses, Deva Orchids and Sidney Conneff of Dublin.

Entry costs 12 but under12s, parking and a shuttle bus from Sallins are all free.