We read and hear a lot these days about genetic engineering. We are promised an end to hunger with an abundance of food. We are tempted to hope for longer life by reading that the world’s best minds have created the technology to grow replacement organs from embryonic stem cells. The ethical problems raised by these scientific advances are far beyond my understanding but the promise of a longer life, I admit, has some attractions. When I first became interested in rhododendrons one of my mentors was Albert de Mezey. As we strolled through his famous garden on Foul Bay Road he advised me in his richly resonant Hungarian baritone that to grow rhododendrons you needed two things – a physical age of thirty and longevity of three hundred.

 I am musing on these matters as I am sticking cuttings in my propagator. Today I put in five cuttings of diaprepes ‘Gargantua’. I know that should I be lucky enough to get these cuttings to develop roots, and I am then lucky enough to get the roots to support some top growth and make a new plant, it will probably be 2020 at the earliest before there is a hope of that plant bearing a blossom. I also know that even as I am absorbed in this stone age style attempt to create another living entity, the new bio-technologies will not be available soon enough for me to see that flower on this particular diaprepes. Quite quickly, I reason with an amazing appeasement of my initial unease, that the world will most probably be a better place with one more diaprepes in it, and certainly not any the worse for me not being in it, and I should quit making any connection between the life of that cutting and my own.

 I think, therefore, the world would probably be a better place if we all got at least one cutting to root and made a new plant and to heck with a three hundred year life span for humans. Just be glad that rhododendrons have it. And so with this primitive process that I use, I become a creator and I can look forward to the hugely fulfilling feeling I will have when I gently tamp those rooted cuttings into a six inch pot and tie a brand new label on each fledgling plant.

 In the past I have had groups of people come to my not very sanitary greenhouse and the group sits on a plank on one side of the propagating bench while I do a demonstration of how to make a new plant. I have a supply of styrofoam coffee cups and a pail containing a mix of moistened peat and perlite , a small container of rooting hormone and some clear plastic bags. These groups are often what I call the ‘blue rinse’ set – middle aged ladies who have immaculate gardens as well as immaculate hair-dos. (Middle age in these genetically-enhanced times goes from 55 to 85). Then they all prepare their own cuttings; removing all but three or four leaves and cutting those leaves in half; wounding the base of the cutting just through to the cambium under the bark; dipping the cutting in the rooting compound, then dibbling a hole in the ’dirt’ filled coffee cup and popping in the cutting. After labelling and making a little greenhouse with the plastic bag sealed by a rubber band they take off for home, trooping out of the greenhouse in single file with smugly satisfied smirks on their faces and the precious plastic bag held delicately between thumb and forefinger; each of them looking as if she was reliving the taking home from kindergarten of that first finger painting to show to an admiring parent. For me, the most satisfying part comes when these people come back and say, "Do you remember when we took those cuttings of that azalea? Well, I put it on the kitchen window sill, and now it has grown three inches. Should I plant it outside?"