There are a few things that I've spent much of my life avoiding and I'm not just talking about Morris dancing here. I've also spent a lot of time avoiding anything to do with horses. You see, I look and learn. I watched other men whose wives and daughters had become infected with the horse virus and noticed that if you evince even the tiniest bit of interest you can easily end up driving horse-boxes all around the country on Saturday mornings when any sensible person would be in bed. That, and being on permanent fence-fixing duty. This particular virus has lost much of its previous virulence in my house, but there's another that shows no sign of abating. It's the horticultural virus, the one that makes you want to spend inordinate amounts of time in garden centres and plant nurseries. My wife is infected with this one, but up till now has never managed to persuade me to accompany on her plant-purchasing forays.

Anyway, this story begins a couple of years ago when a few people emailed me to tell me about a fine restaurant in Carlow called Danette's Feast. Life can be cruel, and by the time I had got around to going to Carlow to try it, it had closed. Then, starting a year ago or so, more emails arrived telling me about Mulberries Restaurant, which is in the Arboretum garden centre in Leighlinbridge and which used to be run by the same Danette. This time I was determined to get there, so on a sunny morning my wife and I set off for Leighlinbridge and lunch. After a detour through the town of Leighlinbridge we found ourselves right back at the by-pass which is where the Arboretum is. Lunch runs until 2.30, and we got there with a few minutes to spare. The restaurant is at the far end of an enormous hypermarket of a garden centre and I practically had to drag my wife past all the horticultural knick-knacks that exerted a magnet-like hold over her attention. 'Later,' I said. 'we can look at this after lunch.' If only I'd realised what I was letting myself in for.

The restaurant is simply done, pine tables and chairs and partitions make it entirely in keeping with its garden centre surroundings. Plants surround you wherever you look, and if Susie is right, the air is consequently charged with an abundance of oxygen. There's a buffet at the far end, and even though we'd arrived near to closing time the food on display still looked fresh and appetising. We wandered up and down, tray in hand, until finally settling upon our choices: a half-inch thick slice of boned and rolled turkey plus a slice of ham for Susie and the same sized trencherman's slab of roast loin of bacon for me. We both added to this the garlic potatoes, then Susie picked out the peas and almonds and some mash, to which she added some white sauce. I added what I thought was potato salad, but it turned out to be a rather tasty egg mayonnaise.

You help yourself to the wines as well, the whites in a glass-fronted fridge, the reds on a stand alongside. All of them were very reasonably priced, and true to my conviction that New Zealand makes good Sauvignon Blanc varietals I picked out of the fridge a bottle of Lawson's Dry Hills Sauvignon, a really full-flavoured wine which was priced at just over £16. Two half-litres of mineral water finished the drinks order and we went to pay at the cash desk. All of this came to £29.39, which when you subtract the wine doesn't seem like very much.

We found a table inside, having decided that outside was just a little too chilly without overcoats, and sat down to enjoy our lunch. Every bit of what we had chosen had the unmistakable hallmark of home-made; simple, uncomplicated, genuine and very tasty. Even the white sauce, a culinary endeavour I tend to avoid wherever possible, was deemed excellent by Susie. Certainly the portions are not for the faint-hearted, but to my surprise Susie ate every bit of the meat on her plate, and we both made significant inroads into the rest of the meal as well.

With this finished it was time to think about desserts. Susie had been looking at them before we sat down and told me that they also appeared to be home-made. She went up to the counter and returned with a Pavlova, darker and crispier than the commercial variety, and very good indeed. Our two spoons made short work of this and then we slowly sipped two good espressos. I would have been happy to linger a while, but the call of the garden centre was too strong for the artist. Parting with just over a fiver for the Pavlova and the coffees, I found myself being hustled out into, for me, the unfamiliar world of horticultural accessories.

Actually after a while I started to like it - there are acres of plants to examine and a huge array of garden bits and bobs outside, like statuary, dinosaur eggs, sundials, urns and gurgling water-feature thingies that made me want to run to the loo. I found myself looking at a large brass sundial and thinking 'I really need this, I should buy it, how have I lived for so long without it?' That's when I realised the danger, it's all to easy to find things here that you really, really need. After a while I found Susie pushing a cart laden with plants, pots and miscellaneous garden stuff and managed to get her to the check-out before she picked up anything else.

You can eat at very reasonable prices in Mulberries, but with the vast array of goods on display you'll find it hard to leave the Arboretum without dropping the cost of the meal again, especially if you have a wife who's plant-mad.