2026/1 - Have you made your green new year's resolutions?

 Not yet? Well, get a move on, then!

My Regular Readers (yes, capitals, as I do adore you) know that I paint for fun. This was my Christmas card for 2025. But it serves this blog.

Shall I give you a hand? With those resolutions, I mean?

Ooh! I know this means I am skating on thin ice, as most people don't like being told what to do (I am one myself). 

Over here we will be lucky if we can try to skate on thin ice this winter, as climate change means we will probably have no ice at all...but that is totally beside the point.

Hm, on second thought, perhaps it is better when I give you MY resolutions, and you can decide if they suit you as well. Here goes:

1. Despite it being a total disaster, as it has sprung a leak, continue to keep up (= fill up) my frog pond, to help out the animals that use it as their water supply during those freaky dry spring/summer months.

 It houses salamanders, so to fill it in with soil would be a crime, right?! But I know the  birds and the allotment cats and hedgehog use it as well.

2. Keep providing for my bees. 

That means building more bee hotels around my garden, and topping up the wood piles, and making certain there are enough pollen flowers around. This bumble bee was taking a lovely nap in the hydrangea, but for food it is a totally useless plant. The 'old' hydrangeas can stay (planted by my predecessor), but no new ones will arrive!

 

3. Appreciate and tolerate my 'blow-ins', even if they are in an awkward position. 

As this wild carrot was. The hoverflies and other flying insects love these visitors from the grass verges around my plot, so they can stay where they have planted themselves. If it means I cannot maintain my grass paths in the manner I would like, so be it.

4. Tolerate, and try to appreciate, the creepy crawlies of the slimy kind...

I know...hard, isn't it? I am kind of lucky in that many of them prefer to crawl to my neighbour's plot, as he grows lush veggies. But still, when they do munch on my plants, I need to remind myself that they have a functional role to play.

5. Only source new plants from sustainable organic local growers, and don't buy flowers for the house, but only grow them myself.

 This means I no longer have shop-bought blousy bouquets in winter to cheer myself up...Mind you, my house is chock-a-block with (flowering) houseplants, so I do satisfy my green itches.

6. Plant more roses.

Oh dear. This is a very selfish resolution, I am afraid. I cannot help myself, roses are my absolute favourite plant. But I do go to an organic grower to get them, promise! And I try to propagate them myself.

Right. Six resolutions are enough to be getting on with, I think.

I do wonder what this new gardening year will bring. Hopefully it will not be as dry as 2025! My garden really struggled, and consequently so did I. But I try to follow the climate as it dictates...if it means a different (more drought-tolerant) garden, then so be it. Us gardeners go with the flow by necessity, right?

As I am writing this (from my lazy chair at home), I can see a jackdaw really digging into the peanuts I hung up for the birds. So far it has been very mild, with only one night of frost. But jackdaws are opportunists that love a peanut. Whilst it is eating, it keeps a beady eye on me. It looks like a young one, who has not yet learned by experience that is has nothing to fear from me.

Have a good month, a good year, and keep gardening!

Renée Grashoff