A GLOBE-TROTTING life has brought Teyl de Bordes to the suitably named village of Lilliesleaf, in the Borders, to conduct a worldwide plant search.

From his Lilliesleaf base, he is conducting the mammoth task of tracking down and collecting 300 varieties of epimedium - a small plant with heart-shaped leaves and tiny bell-like flowers in delicate colours.

He expects his search will take up the rest of his life - and he is still only in his thirties.

Born in Venezuela and brought up in Holland, he studied horticulture for two years at the National Trust centre in Castle Douglas before jetting off to work in a botanical garden in the Japanese village of Nikko.

He returned to Scotland to set up his own gardening business. Five years ago, he found the walled garden at Linthill, Lilliesleaf, near Melrose, which had been operating none too successfully as a garden centre for 15 years.

He rented it from the owners of the big house to which it is attached and has transformed it into a thriving business, specialising in herbaceous plants.

He also has the only National Plant Collection of epimediums in Scotland. The National Plant Collection scheme was set up 10 years ago to conserve the genetic stability of plants and protect them against the vagaries of fashion, disease and extinction.

Many varieties of plants were being lost and specialist nurseries and growers were recruited by the scheme ''to play a primary role in creating havens for endangered plants''.

Epimediums are deceptively delicate looking plants that grow in compact clumps, some of them very small, with heart shaped leaves and tiny bell-like flowers in delicate colours. Even the largest are never bigger than four inches high. The heart-shaped leaves vary in colour from pale green to russet and purple.

De Bordes corresponds with other enthusiasts all over the world and, as a result, has gathered more than 100 plant varieties.

Some believe that epimediums are native to the British Isles, and De Bordes has a print of one dated 1794 framed with a page from a gardening book which says they are native to Dorset. However, he believes the plants originated in the Mediterranean. They are also native to China, Japan and Asia Minor.

There are deciduous and evergreen epimediums, but the deciduous do better in the Scottish Borders than the evergreens, which can be sensitive to frost.

Lilliesleaf Nursery is the proud guardian of the rarest epimedium yet found - a purple-leafed example called Black Sea, which a Dutch colleague of De Bordes found as a tiny shoot in the middle of a clump of more ordinary examples. It is thought it was an accidental hybrid but De Bordes is cultivating it and it will make its public debut at the Strathclyde show this weekend.

The Lilliesleaf display will be emphasising epimediums at the show and de Bordes is hoping that he will repeat his success of 1997 when he won a silver medal.