Happy New Year. As I look out of the window at my January garden I’m groaning. It looks so weather-beaten and drab. I’ve yet to master the art of having a garden that looks gorgeous – or even vaguely attractive – all year round. So my gardening resolutions for 2023 have to include working out a way of making my garden look better especially in the colder autumn and winter months.
But what else is on my to do list for the year ahead? Here’s a run down of the things I’m hoping to achieve in 2023.
1. Compost Heap
I am trying to be a more environmentally friendly gardener and so composting has to be a priority. At the moment I have a compost heap but it’s literally that – a heap! It’s one enormous pile that is almost impossible to turn. As a result the air doesn’t get to the material at the bottom of the pile – and not much compost is produced.
I have tried standing on the heap and turning it as I stand on it! It looks bonkers and it’s not a very workable system. I can’t picture Monty doing that.
In contrast, my neighbour Desi, has a wonderful, efficient compost system in place – with neat, separate bays for her compost as it progresses. So I’m going to hop over the wall for a proper tutorial with Desi. I’ll back this up with some desk research and get my own system in place. I could easily put a few bays in the area where I’ve one enormous heap. I just need to get on and do it.
2. Rose Regime
I’m a bit ad hoc with my rose care and want to be much more systematic in 2023, especially as I have so many roses in my garden – Little White Pet, Jacqueline du Pre, Wildeve, Lady of Shallot, For Your Eyes Only, Zephirine Drouhin and Boscobel to name a few.
In particular I want to have another crack at the black spot which still plagues so many of my roses. I’m going to re-double my efforts to see if I can get more on top of it. In particular I’ll more meticulously pick up and dispose of all the blackspot leaves which have gathered on the ground below the shrubs. I do attempt to do this but have to admit, I can be a bit half-hearted about it.
This month is a good time to prune shrub and climbing roses. In 2023 I’d like to get better at that too. For instance, I can see that I definitely have some crossing stems which need removing. It’s important to remove them as if they rub they can create a wound on the rose where disease can flourish.
3. Rose Feed
I’m also going to much more regularly feed my roses in 2023. Again, Desi next door swears by a mixture called Uncle Tom – and her roses look tip top.
Uncle Tom is a natural rose tonic. So it’s perfect if, like me, you don’t like to use chemicals on your garden. Uncle Tom comes in a funny looking bottle and a little goes a very long way! You just add 10ml to 1 litre of water and drench the soil around your rose to give it a boost. You then use it every 7-14 days from April to October as a drench or rose spray.
I began using Uncle Tom about 18 months ago, but not systematically. So in 2023 I’m going to give it a proper, regular go.
4. Growing Flowers for the Home
You may recall that in February last year I vowed to not buy flowers for the home. Instead I wanted to see if I could be more sustainable by growing all the flowers and foliage I’d need for my vases. This way I’d avoid all the air miles, plastic wrap and chemicals associated with shop bought blooms.
My sustainable flowers for the home initiative was moderately successful. Well, put it this way, I didn’t buy any shop flowers. But I didn’t necessarily have gorgeous vases all year round. I really struggled in the autumn. So I’m going to take an extra look at the plants I need to grow that are autumn flowering and see if I can improve things.
As one of my gardening resolutions, I’m also going to try and be better at posting images of my vases on my facebook and instagram pages. Sorry, I know I’ve been a bit rubbish at doing that in 2022!
5. Bird Box
Mr F-W bought me for my birthday an amazing bird box and wifi- linked camera so that I could potentially monitor a bird while it nested and raised its young. We dutifully put it on the front of our cottage, and looked on from afar (using our phones) as gorgeous little blue tits made their home there. It was so interesting.
They spent a lot of time rubbing their chests on the bottom of the box, marking their territory I guess. After what seemed like days and days of this, they began building their nest in the box, fiddling with bits of moss etc. However…by the time they’d finished larking about doing all this chest rubbing and moss reorganising, the wisteria on the front of the house had grown. So much so that it obscured all the light from the box. As a result, we couldn’t actually see the laying of eggs or the emergence and feeding of young! It was so frustrating.
So a practical one of my gardening resolutions for 2023 is to move the box a bit, so that it still receives the wifi signal but doesn’t get covered in wisteria!
6. Sunny Bed
The sunny border which runs around two sides of our patio needs a bit of a further sort. In addition to giving extra TLC to the roses in the bed, I need to look at some of the perennials planted there. In particular, the Salvia nemerosa ‘Caradonna’ is looking really tired and a bit lost. It’s on the shadier side of the bed and doesn’t really work where it is. The dark purple of its flowers doesn’t show up. So I’m going to revisit this edge of the border and rethink the planting.
I’m also going to explore having more bulbs in the bed. While the sunny bed looks lovely from April/May onwards, it is very bare earlier on in the year. To remedy this, after they’d finished flowering, I moved into the bed some of the gorgeous white flowering spring bulbs I’d had in my white containers. They include:
- Crocus Jeanne D’Arc
- Muscari White Magic
- Hyacinth Carnegie
- Puschkinia Libanotica
- Tulip Swan Wings and Tulip White Lizard
- Narcissus Thalia
I popped these spent bulbs into the border in clumps – not wanting to disturb them too much.
I can see that the bulbs are just coming up. So it will be interesting to see if they do the trick and enliven the sunny bed at this time of year.
Some will probably not work very well. For instance, I don’t expect much from the tulips; I always feel tulips replanted from containers can quickly run out of steam. But over the next few months I’ll know how these reused bulbs look and whether I should repeat this process in 2023 or whether I need to try something else.
7. Front of House
At the front of our cottage we have a gravel area. I put quite a lot of containers here. These are supplemented by agapanthus, irises and roses growing in the gravel.
But if I’m honest it’s all a bit of a jumble. While in early spring the containers tend to be full of white flowering bulbs, I don’t have much of a colour scheme after this. And there’s not much structure to it all. Just oodles of pots!
I think it looks quite nice. After all any flowering plants with bees and butterflies flitting around them gladden the heart and brighten things up. But I know it could be a lot better. So as one of my gardening resolutions for 2023 I’m going to have a look at the containers and plants I have. I’ll also explore some really successful fronts of cottages in neighbouring villages for inspiration. To see if I can rejig things and really get this area working to its full potential.
8. Sheds!
Mr F-W has erected a gazebo/marquee thing in our garden. No we’re not having a wedding. The tent is over the space where his new shed is being built. By having something like this keeping the rain off, he says he’ll be able to crack on with building the shed in all weathers. This is fantastic news as once the new shed is up, the old monstrosity of a green shed at the bottom of our garden will come down. I’m hoping that the concrete shed next to it will also be removed. Oh happy days!
As a result of all this shed malarkey, I will need to reimagine the bottom of our garden – and how best to use all this new extra space. Greenhouse, seating area, gazebo, pond, water feature, mini wild flower meadow – ooh the options. Now before I start getting too wedded to one or all of these ideas, experience tells me not to get too carried away. There’s no such thing as a quick job when it comes to creating a beautiful shed. But surely one of my gardening resolutions for 2023 can include some bottom of garden planning/dreaming.
9. Blue Pots
Last year I began creating a mini walkway from our backdoor featuring dark, bright blue pots filled with lovely foilage plants – ferns, hostas, Spotty Dotty, acers etc. It’s a relatively narrow and shaded spot and I felt this was a good way to optimise the area. The blue pots really ‘pop’ in the gloom and the lush, often green, foliage contrasts with them.
Indeed, I think it worked quite nicely and one of my gardening resolutions is to try to build on and enhance this area in 2023.
10. Lavender Line
Last but by no means least I will need to attend to the arc of lavender in my garden. It has become overgrown, so after flowering I gave it a vigorous, you might say brutal, chop to see if I could restore it. Time will tell if this has worked, but if it hasn’t I will bite the bullet and replace it.
Those are my major gardening resolutions for 2023. Though, knowing me, I’ll probably get distracted and do a whole load of other jobs instead once things get going. But at least I’m begining the year with a bit of a ‘to do’ list.
What about you? What are your plans? Do let me know.
Happy 2023 – and happy gardening xx
In the winter I put some of my pruned brushwood into empty pots held in place with spent compost and intersperse these with any broken alium seedheads and any other interesting seedheads such as from my climbing hydrangea and a few blooms from my hydrangea that are going over. All can be decorated with a few ivy vines, evergreen and fir cones and hung with bird food – suet balls and peanut bars. I had some ribbon this year that I used to decorate. It all looks very festive and gives the winter garden a bit of a boost!
What a brilliant idea Linda – thank you so much for sharing. I’ll definitely give that a try!