After our fascinating excursion to Fota Arboretum we headed off into Cork for another fine meal at an establishment recommended by Joy and Don. Being so passionate about growing and cooking good food themselves, it’s only natural that they migrate to the best restaurants.

Café Paradiso is a fine vegetarian restaurant and I could run on about its virtues. But I’m just going to mention my starter, which I cajoled my wife judy into photographing: “Deep fried courgette flowers filled with fresh goat’s cheese and capers, basil alioi, courgettes panfried with ‘Sungold’ tomatoes and a potato cake.”

It was simply delicious. I’ve tried stuffing courgette flowers myself and I think there must be a knack to it! (I had as little success with daylily flowers – perhaps I should practice…) The crunchy flowers, the creamy filling with its little bite, the slender slices of green and yellow courgette (zucchini for the benefit of American readers), the aromatic basil – and notice the specific variety of tomato… any old tomato just won’t do! The potato cake was a perfect accompaniment. Perhaps one of these days, when I’ve honed my flower stuffing skills, I’ll have a go at it myself.

You can check out many of the recipes from the Café Paradiso in their cookbooks, written by its founder Denis Cotter.

Continuing our visit to West Cork, we went off to hear Joy Larkcom speak at the Grow Your Own seminar at Fota Arboretum. A short ferry ride from the mainland, the island of Fota is located in Cork Harbour and its world famous arboretum features a superb collection of trees and shrubs in particular in a balmy frost free environment.

Joy’s talk – make sure you catch her if she’s speaking near you – was entitled Creative Vegetable Gardening and featured not only her own gardens but other gardens in Europe and North America. Lots of ideas to steal!

After the talk Brian Cross led a guided tour of the arboretum. Brian’s own garden at Lakemount has been described by the Royal Horticultural Society as one of Ireland's "flagship gardens". He knew Fota at a very early age and proved a good-humoured and knowledgeable guide.

The arboretum, which rarely gets a frost, features many fine trees including the largest Cryptomeria japonica 'Spiralis' in Europe and two other huge cryptomerias by the pond as well as specimen palms, magnolias and cedars. There are some lovely specimens of the Drimys winteri with its fragrant spring flowers and also of its relation the delightful multicoloured foliage shrub Pseudowintera colorata together with many other plants rarely seen elsewhere.

Bananas and fuchsias, the magenta purple climber Cestrum x newellii and the amazing pink and yellow flowered Lonicera x heckrottii with many fine hardy fuchsias are found in the long border on the other side of the wall from the Pleasure Garden with its many autumn perennials.

Even if you don’t have a great passion for rare trees and shrubs, Fota is still well worth a visit for the atmosphere is restful and intriguing, there’s formal and informal gardens through which to stroll and the café chowder was very tasty.

Visiting the little coastal village of Ring, on the coast of Ireland’s County Cork, a few miles from where we gathered seaweed, revealed three very interesting features - and one of them was even horticultural!

First of all, there’s this dramatic display of summer flowers. You swing round the bend on the way to nearby Clonakilty then struggle to keep your eye on the road as you come across this quirky splash of red, white and blue geraniums, petunias and alyssum. Backed by a stone ruin, set out in a neatly painted red and blue boat – it looks just great. And with the mild climate those flowers will just coming unfrosted.

Then as the shore comes into view, there’s a scattering of white birds along the waterline. Not swans, but egrets. The Little Egret first started breeding in Ireland as recently as 1997, and in Britain at around the same time, and has now spread to almost every coastal Irish county. After seeing its American counterpart, the Snowy Egret, in Florida it was a bit of a shock and a delight to see what at first appeared to be the same bird in Cork. But it turns out to be the Snowy Egret’s Old World cousin.

Then, suddenly around the bend, you’re passed it on the way to the little quay before you know it, is Deasy's Harbour Bar & Seafood Restaurant. Highly recommended by our hosts Joy Larkcom and Don Pollard, they were not wrong. The mussels starter was succulent and tasty, and judy’s fish spring roll was “fabulous” and the rest of the meal was as good. The menu is short and changes often according to the fish available.

So driving around the coast of Cork, enjoying the landscape and the coastline, in one little village too small even for an entry on the Tourism Ireland website, three fascinating features - not to mention the picturesque and still working quay and the breadth of Clonakilty Harbour – bring a most enjoyable visit.

When we last visited Joy Larkcom’s garden in County Cork, she and husband Don were just starting to work on turning the horse pasture behind their little farmhouse into a productive garden. The transformation is amazing.

The stout windbreak was the first thing to go in, they were just starting to plant their fruit… Now the windbreak is mature and doing a vital job in protecting the garden from strong salty winds, the raspberries and other fruits are cropping heavily and apple alley, with a large range of different apple varieties - including a ‘Blenheim Orange’ with fruits the size of footballs – is thriving. The seaweed mulch certainly helps.

Raised beds are producing melons and sweet corn and beans and salad leaves, the pears on the wall look scrumptious – everywhere you look there’s something edible either finishing cropping, coming up to its best, or working its way up to cropping later. It’s that continuity of cropping which marks out the best vegetable gardens, and it’s not just Joy who can manage this. Check out Joy’s Grow Your Own Vegetables for detailed advice, it’s her best seller both on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

There are little patches of cut-and-come again salads in a number of little spaces while in the greenhouse the tomatoes are juicy, and Joy and Don finally came to an uneasy agreement about which of the heirloom aubergines (egg plant) Don could have for the kitchen and which Joy could keep for seed! The one Don was allowed went into his lovely pollock dish – pollock he’d caught himself.

From the golden raspberries on the morning muesli to tomatoes in every shape and colour for the lunchtime salad to the beans and chard for supper – why go to the supermarket to buy food when you can grow it yourself? You don’t need the space that Joy and Don have, you can produce food all the year round in a very small space. The fact that so many people, many new to gardening, are doing exactly that is one of the achievements of Joy’s many years championing organic vegetable growing.