SNIPPET: Per an article in Mar-April 1988 issue of "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine published in Dublin -- Fourteen years earlier, in the townland of Eden, Co. Leitrim, near the village of Rossinver, Rod ALSTON had purchased a cottage with 21 acres of thin soil with its sticky muds and clays that had "broken the farming hearts" of local generations. Over time, and with the help of business partner, Dolores KEEGAN, Rod managed to coax the soil into a virtual "Garden of Eden" - their fine and comprehensive herb garden making the bumblebees of Rossinver drunk with its myriad wonders, flowers and plants of all descriptions and hues. Better still, Eden had became a commercial enterprise backboned by a soaring demand for its premium quality organic vegetables and more than 100 herbs. The dark-haired, bearded man from Manchester, England, with a political science degree somewhere in a drawer, and the pretty flame-haired girl from Dublin who got her horticulture degree in Dublin's famed Botanical Gardens, created a kind of plant paradise. Photos and an article by Cormac MacCONNELL, correspondent of "The Irish Press," appeared in the Mar-April 1988 issue of Dublin's "Ireland of the Welcomes magazine." Midst their paradise of plants, Rod ALSTON attended to the dairy side of the business, as well. "On a summer evening,' said Rod contentedly, 'the herbs especially create a magnificent fragrance all around the garden. It is quite an experience to be out there when the sun goes down' - the air redolent with parsley, sage, rosemary and many different varieties of thyme ... Tansy (not just a herb, but a delousing agent for animals), piquant Spearmint, the Garlic Chive herb, the Eau-de-Cologne herb, Teasel and Red Raripila, etc. At the time the article was written there was a high demand for their produce. In fact, they could scarcely cope with the demand - both mail order and local - and a restaurant in the region was buying courgette flowers to stuff with lobster mousse. So, per the author, when the churnbutter sun slides down over Eden each evening to set in the warm translucence of Lough Melvin shimmering below, it passes over no less than two and a half tilled acres. Using organic techniques only, together with polythene tunnels, the hardworking pair was producing a wide range of commercial vegetables. "We started a North Leitrim Vegetable Growers Association all those years ago. Initially, we sold out on the street, but now we have good premises in Manorhamilton. About half of our produce is sold there, and the rest through other outlets. In 1988, The Garden of Eden near Rossinver was producing four varieties of lettuce alone. They said the work was hard but satisfying - it was keeping them almost self-sufficient. "We have goats, hens, geese, ducks, cows and, accordingly, goat's cheese, free-range eggs. With their green fingers, the man from Manchester and the woman from Dublin had also carefully tended to an old staggering Bramley apple tree with its beautiful but bitter fruit. They refreshed and revived it, set it sturdily upright, until once more its blossoms were flaunting themselves over the herb garden. And Dolores KEEGAN, with her culinary skills, was doing wondrous things with the big cooking apples in tarts and flans that should - there in Eden - almost be regarded as forbidden fruit.