Gardening Resolutions for the New Year

Here's to better health, happiness, and growth for your garden, too

Resolve to enjoy your garden more, whether by eating outside, inviting friends and family over, or simply taking a stroll to smell the roses. Halfpoint/Shutterstock

Aren’t you glad 2021 is over? Hopefully, 2022 will be better. Gardening makes everything better, so let’s talk about how to make gardening better.

Make a New Year’s resolution to learn more about gardening. Resolve to take a gardening class with your local extension office, which is part of your state university. All year long, they offer local classes on many gardening subjects. Another aspect of the learning process is to go and see what others are doing. If you can’t plan your vacation around a garden show, at least visit arboretums and gardens near your destination.

With the start of a new year, we get to reflect on the changes we want to make in our lives. Many of us gardeners enjoy the seasonal changes in the landscape and enjoy making changes to our gardens. Even in the middle of winter, we are thinking about gardening and planning on making changes as we get each new garden catalog in the mail.

To help your garden and landscape grow better and healthier this year, I have a few more suggested resolutions. Repeat after me.

I resolve to add more mulch to my flower beds, where it will decrease weeds, saving me money on weed killers and protecting the environment from useless weed killer applications.

I resolve to take the money-wasting mulch off the trunks of my trees, so they stop looking like the mountain of mulch is holding the tree up. Mulch piled on tree trunks kills trees—it doesn’t help them.

For a better, brighter year ahead, turn to the backyard. Planting and nurturing a garden has myriad benefits for the gardener. goffkein.pro/Shutterstock

I resolve to save time and money by pruning my trees and shrubs in their natural shapes, not goofy squares and balls.

I resolve to find out what disease or insect is affecting my plant before I pollute my yard with poisons that are used for treating something else. Saying “It can’t hurt” isn’t really true.

I resolve to mow my grass at a higher height. The longer leaves will support a better root system, so it will need less water and fight off weeds better.

I resolve to start a compost pile and add to it regularly, so that I don’t have to waste money buying compost to add to my garden.

I resolve to take my power tools and lawnmower for servicing and sharpening. Properly adjusted tools pollute less and sharp tools work better, making them safer.

I resolve to order more catalogs from MailOrderGardening.com, as it is the source of the most comprehensive list of gardening catalogs available anywhere.

And lastly, I resolve to enjoy my garden more by eating outside more often, strolling through the yard to smell the flowers without pulling any weeds, and having at least one party with family and friends over to enjoy the garden, too.