Friday, December 31, 2010

New Year's Resolutions for the Garden

January is one of the best times for thinking about the garden.   While plants rest in dormancy under the frozen ground, my mind starts racing next spring’s garden.  It’s particularly true this year.  Last month, my wife and I bought a house in Arlington, Virginia.  It’s an ugly 1951 rambler that needs quite a bit of work (the real estate ad said “ignored, not abused.  As-is condition”).  But it was a great deal, and has a nice-sized sunny yard that I can’t stop thinking about.  I redesign it every other day.  I keep moving around the different gardens I’d like to have in it. 
My I-can’t-live-without list includes a potager (the French counterpart to the English kitchen garden), a cutting garden, a wild garden, an herbaceous border with a color theme (maybe oranges, saffrons, corals . . . I’m mad about orange this year), some boxwood or yews clipped into dreamy shapes, a potting shed . . . the list goes on and on.  Of course, all this has to be done with almost no budget (the money evaporated with the down payment), so perhaps I’ll have to collect seeds from the wild.  Or steal cuttings from the neighbors under the cover of darkness.
All of this dreamy delirium needs to be harnessed with some disciplined New Year’s resolutions.   Here I’m proposing some of my garden resolutions for 2011.  Perhaps some of them will inspire your garden resolutions.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

New Year's Resolution #1: Blog More

Well, I’m hoping that my last post about the joys of being a new parent was a plausible excuse for my lack of blogging recently.  The last several weeks have been a whirlwind including buying a new home, taking a job teaching planting design at George Washington University at night, and tending to my little one.  But thanks to super blogger Susan Harris for nudging me back onto the laptop.  Her recent article in Garden Rant, one of my favorite garden blogs, was great motivation for me to jump back into blogging.  Thanks, Susan.
So if there’s anyone still out there reading this, look out this week for a new articles on “Garden Resolutions for 2011” and “Trends in the Landscape for 2011.”  Wishing you all a joyous and bountiful 2011!

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