Wishing you all the very best for 2026 dear readers! May your gardens flourish! Have you made any New Year’s gardening resolutions?
New Year’s resolutions can be a bit of a double-edged sword, holding the promise of perfection as well as potential disappointment further down the line. But it can be useful to use this quiet time at the beginning of the year to reflect on what you want to add to the garden or change in it.
Here are my gardening resolutions:
Spend more time gardening! 2025 was a busy year for me designing gardens for clients and my own got a bit neglected. Carving out more time for my own will remind me why I embarked on this new career in the first place!
Improve the soil. As I harp on to my clients, adding organic matter to the soil is incredibly beneficial but shouldn’t be a one-off job. Think spring and autumn time. Luckily I have a nice pile of garden compost slowly maturing. Horse manure would be nice but requires me to go out to a field in the countryside and shovel it into bags. Resolutions do need to be realistic!
3- I need to be ruthless with plants that aren’t thriving in my garden, and get rid. Japanese acers, I am looking at you! Except for a lovely one that seems happy enough in a pot.
4- Rationalise! Repeating plants is better than a mad mix of this and that. A difficult one to stick to in a small garden! But I have a long east-facing border in mind that would benefit from a bit more coherence.
5- Grow veg but only what I love and what works well in my Wild West allotment. Related to no.4, I want to concentrate my limited resources. Rainbow chard, salad stuff, cherry tomatoes, peas, purple curly kale…oh and get my sweetcorn sown by end of April. Last year I was too late and it didn’t have time to mature!
After the work of organising a Christmas wreath-making workshop in December for ten participants – including hours of collecting plant material – I resolved never again. But everyone had fun, so maybe that’s one resolution I will break.
Let’s see what I manage to stick to. I should add that I also want to blog more frequently. Fingers crossed! Tell me what your gardening resolutions are!
Your new career has obviously taken off, well done you. Good ideas about future plans. I have been more ruthless in getting rid of things that don’t do well and trying to coordinate more. Like you I have a small garden. And I hope to see you blogging more as you always have something interesting to say.
Thank you, that’s nice. I find I blog best when I don’t think of it as part of my ‘work’ – maybe that put me off a bit. So will endeavour to keep it more personal with the odd useful bit thrown in here and there!
It’s all going well for you so your grumbling is no more than that! Re assessing approaches to gardening, we find – because of advancing years, less energy, less strength etc – that we have to eliminate those aspects which are most demanding of time and energy. Trees and shrubs are in favour; perennials which require staking less so.
Yes a bit of a grumble! I think you’re right though, we always need to adapt in gardening and assess what’s realistic. The key thing is that it continues to be enjoyable. I personally resent plants that need staking! Peonies!!
I love your resolution to spend more time in your own garden. I’ve come to realize the garden itself is a resolution—a place where reflection becomes action. It’s the ultimate antidote to the ‘busyness’ of our digital careers
That’s a really nice way to put it.