2017 New Year Resolutions for the Gardener
21.08.2023 - 11:55
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
It’s time to shake the mud of 2016 off our boots, and to prepare the soil for 2017 (metaphorically speaking). I have the bones of a planting plan for next year, which will be subject to revisions, and we know which areas of the garden still need work.
In the two years since we moved into this house, Ryan and I have concentrated on building a garden, and we haven’t done very much inside. It was all redecorated (in tasteful magnolia, which I loathe) before we bought the house, and we’re in the early stages of putting our stamp on it. Like lots of couples who move in together, we each had a houseful of stuff when we did, and although we’ve rehomed a lot of surplus things, we’re still mired in ‘stuff’. So we will be focusing on decluttering and rehoming, certainly for the start of 2017.
I have a lot of books, and whilst I don’t think it’s possible to have too many, they do create storage problems. So I am going to do two things with regards to books this year. The first is to operate a ‘one in, one out’ policy. If I want to give a new book a permanent spot on a shelf, one of the others has to leave to find a new home. The key question to ask is whether I’m really going to read it or refer to it in future.
The second thing I’m going to do is related. I have a lot of (mainly gardening and food) books that I haven’t read, or have partly read. And so I’m planning on reading one each month, to determine whether it’s worth its place on the shelf. The book I have selected for January is ‘The Gardener’s Year’, by Karel Capek – a gardening classic that happens to be first on the shelf.
On a more personal note, I found 2016 a difficult year to deal with in terms of world events. It’s easy to be overwhelmed, to be overcome by the